Your Website is Live — Now What?

Over the past few months I've been working with a client to help them migrate hundreds of pages of content from their old website to a new one, as well as writing an equal amount of blog posts promoting the excellent content they have on their site. It's been quite an endeavor and we are almost to the goal line—the go live date!

On a recent call, I asked, "Do you have a plan for after the website is launched?" This question seemed a surprise to them.  Because the website in question is a very complex and robust website, I can understand that their minds and labors have been so focused singularly on getting the website up and running that they were not able to focus past their go live date. This is a very common situation when launching a new website or migrating from an old one.

My suggestion was that they put together a promotions plan for announcing the new website to their customers, prospects, and the industry in general. The following are the recommendations that I provided, which you can use for promoting your new website.

While each company’s website project will be unique to the company, some common areas to focus on when discussing the benefits of a new website are:

• Better user experience

• More and expanded content

• Easier to navigate

• Mobile responsiveness

There should be one commonality throughout your communication when discussing the benefits of the new website: it’s a better experience for your customers and visitors.  

Here are several common ways to communicate these new benefits and promote the launch of a new B2B website:

Press Releases

Traditional press releases are a great way to communicate to the world that you have a new website. Press releases can also be a powerful way to drive traffic to your new site and to reach a new target audience. Utilizing a service such as PR Web can be very effective and affordable for the amount of reach your press release will receive.  

Client Communications

Sending out an email or including information about the new website in printed client newsletters can be a great way to show your current clients that you have been working hard on creating a better user experience and creating additional value for them.

Virtual or Live Tours

If your website if fairly complex and you have a defined pool of clients that need to understand how to navigate your website and do specific things on it, having a virtual (recorded tour with an actual web browser) or even a live or recorded webinar might be beneficial.

Blog Post(s)

A few blog posts about the new website can provide some additional details on the changes to the site, why you made the changes, and how those changes can benefit specific audiences. You could create a series of blog posts published over a few weeks that details each benefit of the site rather than just a single post.

Social Media

Posting information about new features or how the new site offers a better user experience can work really well on social media. It can help to get prospects curious about what you have to offer and get clients excited about what the new site contains.  

The message that you have a new website can be amplified using social media when everyone in your company, including key executives, use social media to announce the new website. Writing and sending everyone at the company pre-written messages for each social media network that you want to communicate through can be an effective way to amplify the message via everyone at the company.  

Other Communications

If you think about the number of emails that your company sends through individual team members on a daily basis, it can sometimes number in the thousands. What if every employee added something to their email signature/footer area about visiting the new website? That could be a powerful way to get current clients and possibly prospects to check out the new site.

The Hard Work Begins

After your website is live and you have communicated to your customers, the industry, and your prospects the great new features and content available, the real work begins. The real work with any website is to make sure the website remains dynamic and that you consistently adding content to the site. This is one of the tangible benefits of regularly publishing a blog, since it forces you to add content to your site regularly and gives customers and prospects a reason to come back. And after all, you just spent a lot of time and money on building a new site, so making sure that you are giving your customers and prospects a reason to come back is critical to your success.