Life After Launch

You’ve gathered the assets, written the copy, tested your code and launched your website into space. Now what? Breathe a sigh of relief. But your work isn’t over. Once your site is live, it’s time to compete with others in your industry to drive business. Your website is a crucial revenue-generating asset that constantly needs to evolve and improve; it’s not a one-trick pony. Here’s a quick checklist of things to help you stay on top of your game.

IMAGE OPTIMIZATION

No one likes to wait for a website to load. If yours takes too long, people are bound to leave before the reveal, which has a negative impact on your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or users’ ability to find you when doing a Google search. One major factor that contributes to slow loading time is images with high pixel density or huge dimensions. Quickly fix this by using a tool such as https://tinypng.com/ to compress all of your images.

But image optimization doesn’t stop there. Since search engines crawl file names as well as text on each webpage, image names and alt-text are great places to insert keywords that are relevant to your page and industry. This will help to validate your business as a reliable source when users search for those specifically-targeted keywords.

CONTENT

Now that your site is in the wild getting web traffic, tweak your content accordingly. Site performance isn’t just relegated to speed. Monitoring software, like Google Analytics, provides information to let you know which pages are receiving high traffic and which ones aren’t. With this tool, you’ll be able to adjust low performing pages and track your conversions accordingly. Remember, your site is a living entity that must continue to be re-evaluated.

These stats aren’t limited to page visits. You should also review your calls-to-action, website page titles and SEO descriptions. Are they still relevant? Are your page titles, descriptions and content optimized? If you do a fair bit of content updates or outsource this task, make sure that the tone of voice used in your copy and graphics is consistent and on-brand.

SEO

We’ve touched on how providing additional information in images and using current, relevant copy will greatly improve your SEO, but it is an ongoing battle. Over the life of your website, be sure to periodically do some spring cleaning and remove any content that is no longer relevant to stay current. Have you added new content since you launched? Not only does adding new content benefit your site’s performance, it will establish your company as the industry expert. Having good SEO means that any content inserted is optimized and performant. Everything must be intentional; this attention to detail is crucial when trying to stay ahead of the competition.

TL;DR:

Launching a new site with optimized images, content and keywords is only half the battle. There are several layers of optimization that need to be in the forefront, pre- and post-launch. Performing optimization strategies after your site has launched will help you continue to leverage your new website for business success in the future.