At Webstar Uganda, we believe getting your website live is the crucial first step in any website or web app’s journey. Many people believe that after the launch it’s time to relax .
Publishing a website takes time and energy and Most people never actually make it to this point. For website or web app to succeed and grow, its need to consistant updating and improving.
In order to help you navigate the rough waters following a launch we’re going to walk you through the process of creating a website management plan for both the short-term (immediately following your launch), and the long-term growth stages of your site. Without this plan it’s easy to fall off course, get discouraged, and fail to move your site in the right direction.
Central Elements of Your Website Management Plan
1. Clean Up Any Post Launch Tasks
Your website is live, now what? Launching takes energy and effort. There are many people out there who spend all this time and energy and never even arrive at the point of having a website live.
In an ideal world the following tasks would have been completed before your launch, but if not, then just get them done as soon as possible.
Check Website loading Speed
Having a fast loading website will improve the overall experience for your user, and help you rank higher in the search engines. To get started use a tool like GTMetrix or Google Pagespeed Insights to see how your site currently performs. Make sure you have a schedule that includes regular checks to ensure your performance isn’t slipping over time.
Double Check All Images
Sometimes your images may be the wrong size, or you’ll have duplicate images across your site. Do a site run-through to ensure every image you’re using is the one you intended. To further enhance site speed you can use a tool like Image Optimizer to compress your images before uploading them.
Do A Content Run-Through
If you launched your site in a hurry, then your content might still contain errors that will throw off your visitors. Some basic things to check out include checking all of your content for spelling errors and misused words, ensuring your content is properly optimized for search engines, and making sure that everything is properly formatted.
It can be helpful to have another team member or outside professional comb through your site for you. Often a fresh pair of eyes can catch things that are easy to glance over.
Multiple Screen Size Check
Do you know what your site looks like across multiple devices? It’s hard to determine what size screen your visitors will be using to access your site. For this reason, it needs to look and perform properly across a multitude of screen sizes.
If you have multiple devices around your office, then pull up your site and spend some time browsing around to see how it functions.
Go Through Forms and Sign-Up Pathways
Chances are you’ll have multiple engagement pathways across your site. This includes elements like email sign-up forms, contact forms, buttons, navigation links, and anything else that requires visitor input in order to function.
Also, be sure to check your site for the dreaded 404 page. Take time to click through every active link on your website to make sure it links to the intended page.
Create and Submit Your XML Sitemap
Your XML sitemap helps the Google web crawlers more easily determine the structure of your website. This file will list all of the relevant URLs that you want to rank in Google. This is a crucial aspect of maintaining and improving your onsite SEO.
2. Create and Execute Marketing Strategies
Websites or Web Apps succeed by increasing your traffic and customers. Lauching can be a big splash, but you need to sustain the momentum.
Online Markething method are many online and we are to give you on which one to choose from.
When choosing which marketing method is best for your business, it’s important to start with the central question: Where does my audience hang out?.By answering this you’ll be able to build a plan on how you can best reach them using the methods below.
Social Media
Social media is usually used to build a community of followers you can then direct back to your website or use as social proof to increase conversions. Large social media followings take time to build, but can be an incredibly powerful source of influence.
Content Marketing
Essentially content marketing is providing value to your readers via both onsite and offsite content. This is usually done in the form of blogs, eBooks, special reports, and guest blogs.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the method of collecting visitor email addresses, so you can provide value and sell them on your services later on. This is usually used concurrently with content marketing and other marketing methods like PPC.
Search Engine Optimization
The Core version of SEO is a way for your site to get a better rank in the search engines for those Keywords which are related to your business. These will be the keywords that your customers are going to search for when they want to know about the problem or solution that your business with.
The higher your site is in the search engines, the more traffic would it get.
Pay Per Click
Pay per click is the way of setting up ads on different platforms, for instance, Google Adwords, and then transferring traffic to your website or landing page. To go this route of advertising, firstly it is important to make sure your website is optimized to the maximum of the traffic you are getting.
3. Continuous Improvement and Optimization.
You might not have enough data or traffic to begin optimizing your website right away. But, proper optimization is crucial if you want a site that allows your business to grow. How else will you know what aspects of your site your audience finds the most valuable?
What Elements Should I Test?
Ideally, you’d test every element of your website (over time) from your link color to the size of your font. However, we recommend starting with the four areas below, as these will have the biggest impact on your bottom line.
Your headline
Your CTA
Your design
Your displayed social proof
Tools for Testing
When it comes to website optimization there are a number of free and paid tools that’ll greatly help your efforts. To get started you can use Google Content Experiments from within the Google Analytics dashboard.
This is a free tool from Google that’ll allow you to run content experiments, so you can optimize your site by tweaking small elements. The data collected from these experiments will then allow you to make better design decisions.
4. General Website Maintenance and Protection
Without a proper maintenance plan and schedule there’s an increased risk your website is going to break or become vulnerable to being hacked. None of these are fun to deal with and they can be easily avoided through the steps below.
Common Maintenance Protocols
To avoid any unnecessary website headaches, stay on top of your maintenance procedures and stick to a regular website maintenance program.
Regular website backups
The frequency of your backups will depend upon how often you update your site. When running a website backup make sure you store your backup in a secure location.
Ensure themes and plugins are up to date
If your site runs on WordPress, or a similar CMS, then your site will become vulnerable the moment it’s not up to date. Often, all it take is a few minutes to update your themes and plugins.
Run a database sweep
Your database is similar to your library. Over time it becomes crowded and unorganized. If your site runs on WordPress, then we recommend using a plugin like WP-Optimize.
Do routine website tests
Constant observation of your website data is extremely vital and this is done by tracking the site performance, checking the loading speed, and traffic numbers. Google Webmaster Tools can be a source of all types of valuable data and insight into your site’s performance.
Website Security Measures
Having a secure website means that your website and the customer data you collect will always be safe.
Complex passwords
The more complex your passwords are, the harder they’ll be to guess. You should also consider having a policy where you reset passwords on a consistent basis.
Consider a firewall
Firewalls will take your security up a notch. They act as an added barrier to stop your site from hackers and other malicious endeavors.
Protect your admin directories
The admin and login areas of your website are especially vulnerable. You can protect these through the firewall above, and also by installing plugins that limit the number of login attempts allowed.
A website management plan is a living document that allows you to track and take control of the evolution of your website. By implementing the suggestions above you can ensure your site is primed for success well into the future.