You Launched a Website, Now What?

Here's a partial list of the checks that Fusionbox runs through after launch of your new website.

Day of the launch:

Things to look for:

1. All the pages load, right? If there are any broken links (shouldn't be) do they go to a 404 page or no-where?
2. Does your contact us form work?
3. Hit that 404 page (www.yourwebsite.com/thislinkshouldnotworkforanyoneevenyourmother) - is it useful? Does it have navigation back to the homepage? Or maybe even a sitemap?
4. Do you have 301 redirects setup? Are they going to pages other than the home page?
5. Do you have some Analytics software on your site, and is it tracking properly?
6. Did you get your Webmaster Tools accounts setup for Google and Bing? (Yahoo! is canceling theirs shortly, so you can drop that step.) Did you submit your /sitemap.xml file to it?
7. Has the /robots.txt file from the test environment been updated?
8. Have social media accounts? Used them to tweeted/update about the new site launch? Yes, your grandma wants to see what you just launched, even if she doesn't get it.
9. Have a blog? Post about the upcoming launch of your fantastic new unicorn-free site (or unicorn-full, perhaps) - today's the day to post the news!
10. Press releases - yep, they still work. Did you write one?
11. And finally - did you email your list to let them know?

After launch:
The site is up, people love it, and the contacts are rolling in . . and then it trails off, unless you keep people coming to the site.

People (and search engines) want fresh content, so you better have some blogs/news/content ready to go BEFORE you launch so you can deal with all those new leads coming in and not have to worry about writing a blog post!

Have new products going out? Have a way to let people know about 'em? Maybe RSS/Tweets/Facebook posts/blog posts?

The list goes on, but these tips should give you a good head start on the whole process. If you need some help, or want us to help you design your website from the start to avoid any potential issues, just contact us.