How to Launch a New Website: Top 5 Tips for Success
About 36% of all businesses don’t have a website. That number may seem shocking, but many people find it intimidating to build a new website and they may not have the budget to hire someone.
Out of the business owners that don’t have a website, 58% know how important it is to have a website and want to build one.
If you find yourself in that category, you don’t have to be intimidated by technology. You just have to follow a few simple steps to learn how to launch a new website.
Keep reading to find out what starting a website involves and how you can do it all yourself.
1. Plan Your Launch
It’s helpful to come up with a plan to build your website. This can be a simple spreadsheet of all of the steps involved. You’ll want to research your competitors, wireframe a design, and handle the small steps outlined below.
You can start by setting a launch date and work backward to create your plan.
2. Take Care of Logistics
There are a few things that you need for your website. The first is your domain name. That’s the address that people use to find your site online.
The second thing is hosting, which is where your website files stay and get served to visitors. Read on here to find out how to pick the right hosting company for your site.
You have to build your site on a platform. This is the backend of your site. WordPress is by far the most popular platform, as it runs almost 40% of all websites.
3. Pick the Right Template
The great thing that most website platforms like WordPress have is that they come with themes or templates to make site design easy. You should already have an idea as to what you want your site to look like and find a template that matches that.
Make sure that your template loads quickly and can be viewed on mobile devices.
4. Install an SSL Certificate
Your website needs to send signals to Google and your customers that it’s safe and secure. Websites that start with HTTPS use a secure socket layer, which encrypts the connection between your visitors and your site.
You have to install an SSL certificate to get your site to start with HTTPS. Your hosting company may offer a free SSL certificate that you can install in a couple of clicks.
5. Install Analytics
The last thing you want to do before you launch is to install Google Analytics and Search Console on your site. These tools tell you how much traffic your site gets and how it appears in Google’s search results.
These numbers are going to help you as you market the site. You’ll be able to tell which campaigns are working and which ones aren’t.
How to Launch a New Website in a Few Easy Steps
Do you know how to launch a new website now? You need to have a plan of attack because there are a lot of small steps involved in building your site. You need to have the right domain name, hosting, design, and messaging to make it all work.
Head over to the Digital Marketing section for ideas to drive traffic to your new website.