4 Crucial, but Often Missed Steps to Launching a New Website

[Image description: Three enthusiastic people lift a giant photograph into place on a larger than life website twice as tall as a human being. It raises the age old question: is it art?]

Launching a new website can be a daunting process. But no matter how difficult, you must always remember the purpose: to make your business more visible and to attract customers. These steps will help you stay on-mission.

1. Choose your platform carefully

There are bazillions of website platforms out there. But there’s one ideally suited to make your life a whole lot easier. Which one is that?

It depends on your: functionality needs, design style, industry, and organization size. I encourage you to do your research, but if you want the sneak peak from an expert who’s researched and worked with dozens of platforms over the last 8 years, here are my top recommendations.

For solopreneurs

Recommendation: Squarespace

This is absolutely my favorite platform. They’re simple to use, beautiful, hard to mess up (which from experience with Wordpress is really easy to do), and are constantly expanding to more options and complexity.

For eCommerce and product stores

Recommendation: Shopify

They are used by the most modern and beautiful brands, will provide all your eCommerce needs, and are pretty easy to use.

For podcasters

Recommendation: Captivate

Good distribution platforms will have a simple but useful built in website platform.

Summary

I’ve picked the wrong platform at least 4 times and wasted months and thousands of dollars on websites and designs I never used, or were too complex or ugly to publish in the end. My central advice: go for the simplest possible system that meets your needs. I believe in you!

2. Start with a 1-5 page website

Web design is all about minimum viable product. Start with the smallest professional looking website you can get away with. Then add from there. If you can get away with a 1 page website, AMAZING, do that. Seriously, go spend 1 hour making it and be done. Then get on with the heart of business. Believe me, as someone who's spent 9 months building a 100 page website that was going to be about 150 pages until I reduced it by 1/3, do what you can to make things bite-sized.

If it's bite sized you can chew on it. And if you can chew on it you can digest it. And if you can digest it you can...poop it out? Ok, the metaphor is falling apart, but I think you get the point - if you can't digest it you'll never get it done. And of course if you can, I recommend passing off the website completely. Your web designer will know how to make a website for your industry much better than you will, and you'll be able to focus on the important work you do and the important marketing work to bring in customers. When in doubt, my business and marketing agency is here for you! Look around our website and discover the blissful world of websites being built for you.

3. Always write the copy first

Your content is the point of your website, so you need to write that and design around it. But! The design and your brand can and should inform the copy that’s on your site.

The super simplified process for web dev is:

1. Write copy

2. Design around it

3. Update copy based on design

4. Update design based on new copy

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you’re happy

Warning: trying to design first will make your brain explode and piss off your designers! Just get that nice clear hierarchy down in copy first and everyone will be happy. I detailed out the hierarchy on a previous post so go check that out.

4. Do UX studies before you launch (and once / year)

It actually turns out doing user studies are super easy. Even during a pandemic. All you need is to gather a handful of clients, prospects, or people with the same demographics or psychographics as your audience. Then record a 30min zoom call (or have them do a screen capture on their own) where they talk their way through your newly designed website and point out confusing areas, things they liked, and things they’d expect or change.

The benefits of doing these UX run-throughs are incredible. There’s no other way to get direct feedback like this besides observing someone using your website and commenting on it as they go. I’ve learned a lot about design by watching people use websites. So gather your friends together and go for it! If you need help figuring out how to organize the user studies, just DM me and we can set up a session.

In conclusion

Are these helpful steps for you right now? Do you have other steps you might want to share with others? Let us know in the comments below.