So your website has been designed and developed and you just want to put it live and tell the world! Before you do just run through our 5+1 steps to make sure you get the most from your launch.
The best way to remember our 5 steps is with the acronym Mr SOS!
Monitor
regulation
Search engine optimisation
Optimisation
Security
Monitor
Install Google Analytics
Install MS Clarity
Create a Search Console Profile
The best part about launching a new site is seeing the number of people that visit it but monitoring a site should go beyond just the number of visitors and how they found your site. We also recommend installing monitoring code such as MS Clarity that allows you to watch how people are interacting on each page. How far do they scroll, what do they click on where do they concentrate their time. If you have an important call to action but your visitors are not finding it you’ll want to know why and where might be a better place to use it.
Google Analytics is probably the most recognised analytics platform for websites which can give you a wealth of data if configured correctly, combine it with Google search console and you’ll be able to build reports to really understand where your website is performing well and where you can look for improvements.
Regulation
Implement GDPR guidelines
Check compliance with European Accessibility Act
Write Privacy Policy
Write terms and conditions
OK, so not a particularly glamorous one but it’s important. Do you know which countries you are targeting at and have you made sure you’re up to date with regulations from each of those countries?
As a minimum you should have a privacy policy page that details how your website may monitor users activity and what you will do with that data. Are there any copyright licences that you need to highlight or any third parties that may have access to change content on your site that you need to protect against?
If you’re targeting just the UK then you need to be aware of the UK GDPR - https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-and-the-eu/data-protection-and-the-eu-in-detail/the-uk-gdpr/ - which means including a cookie banner to give users control and make them aware of what cookies you use and how they may affect the visitors experience.
If you’re targeting EU countries then you need to be aware of GDPR but also a new regulation that will come into force in June 2025 called the European Accessibility Act - https://www.levelaccess.com/compliance-overview/european-accessibility-act-eaa/ - that is aimed at making sure websites meet minimum accessibility guidelines.
SEO
This really should have been your starting point so I’m not talking here about keyword research and generating well written, well structured content as that should have been carried out prior to getting to the moment of launching.
These tips are to make sure that the site can be found by search engines and you give yourself the best chance of starting the indexing process quickly.
- Unblock search engines if you made your site un-indexable whilst developing it.
- Turn off maintenance mode, if you used this whilst developing the site
- Submit to Google and other search engines - tell them the site is ready to be found!
- Create a Google My Business profile, if applicable
- Generate a sitemap for search engines so they can quickly find all your pages
- Add a favicon so your site is recognisable when using multiple tabs or windows in you browser
Optimisation
One of the key metrics for search engines will be how user friendly your site is, in particular how fast it loads on mobile and desktop. A slow loading site will provide a poor user experience and be punished by search engines so the following suggestions are aimed at avoiding that scenario.
Caching - Most platforms and servers will offer some form of caching but you may need to turn them on and configure the settings to work for your site
Compress images - you will no doubt have used a number of images on your site to make it engaging but if they are large and take a while to download it can really affect the users experience. Making sure your images are reduced to the smallest size possible and if possible delivered in a WebP format will really help with improving your page load speed.
If the first 2 are not enough then you can look deeper into the optimisation step with the following 3 additions.
Server resources - You may have to consider the server that your website is hosted on. Does it have the right resources for your visitor numbers and the type of activities users will be participating in. An e-commerce site will most likely need greater resources than a standard information site. If you have heavy database interactions then you’ll need to be sure the server can respond to these requests quickly, possibly requiring a dedicated server
Integrate with CDN - A content delivery network will take some of your website assets and sit them on servers around the world and deliver them from a fast network resource saving your hosting server from doing the hard work.
Cloudflare - This is a CDN provider that also includes a number of other benefits, particularly around security and you should consider pushing your DNS through the Cloudflare proxy.
Security
The last thing you need is to launch your site and then get no leads or just a load of spam hits but the first part is making sure you have an SSL certificate. If you don’t you’ll likely see a Not Secure message when loading the site in a browser. If you’re not being provided with an SSL certificate for free, with your hosting, find a reputable hosting company that does!
Now you can tick off the following items:
Check admin email - Is this going to you or your developer? If you don’t have a maintenance agreement then this should be to your email address so you receive any important information.
Check email sending - Do you website forms work and are they delivering to the correct email address. You may need to set up SMTP authentication to ensure the form notification emails are delivered to you and not the spam filter or worse and blocked entirely.
Antispam - If you have an option to monitor and block traffic, for example with Cloudflare, then use it. You may also be able to install plugins or tools to monitor it for you and stop spam comments from being submitted.
Remove unused plugins / modules - Anything that was only required for the development steps or is now redundant should be removed.
Install security plugin / module - If your website framework allows for a security plugin, module or tool to be installed then use it!
Turn on daily backups - Even with the best planning and monitoring things can go wrong and you should ensure you have a disaster recovery plan in place. This should include a daily backup that’s ideally sent to an offsite location, so not the same location as your website.
So that’s the 5 steps but what's the +1?
Celebrate 🎉
You’ve launched a new site, you’re no doubt excited, so tell the world about it! Post it on your social media accounts, send a newsletter and tell anyone you see! Let then share in your excitement!
Now put your feet up, grab your favourite tipple and pat yourself on the back. This is the start of a new journey - well done on getting here!