Launching a new website is always a big deal. You have plans for your website, and those plans are often only fulfilled when it has a decent-sized audience and is popular enough to monetize properly. How you monetize will depend on you, your brand, and your business model, but this remains the same. To earn money through your website, you need people to be visiting your website and, to do that, you need a great website and an effective marketing strategy. Only with both, and by following these five steps, can you launch with a bang and launch your new brand successfully:
1. Collect Ideas from Multiple Sources
Look online for ideas. You don’t need to study just your competitors, either. Instead, just take ideas wherever you find them. Make a note of design and UX ideas on websites, on apps, on social media, and even from other marketing campaigns. You won’t use them all, but having them on hand is a great way to draw ideas and to even be inspired for your own.
2. Draft Your Website Idea
Your website needs to have a logical structure. You also need to plan out content. Don’t worry too much about planning every minute design detail just yet, as this will change the second you start to create your website itself.
3. How to Create a Website
How you create your website will depend on your budget. If you are looking to start a business online, it is almost always better to invest in a custom design. At a minimum, this should be done by buying a premium theme and then taking the time to customize it and set it up. If you have a bit more budget, hire a web developer to set up that theme for you based on your notes, and if you have a big upstart budget, have the website custom created for your needs.
4. Create Content
Quality content is next. The content in question is search engine optimized written content, beautiful images, and stunning graphics. Even creating your logo and choosing the color scheme is important. Every design and content choice you make, however, must be optimized for search engines. This is how you will get the biggest reach for your site.
5. Market Your Website
Marketing your website requires multiple approaches, which means if you are serious about launching your business, and you don’t already specialize in marketing yourself, then you are going to want to hire a marketing agency to plan and launch your marketing campaign yourself. This includes OOH marketing, digital marketing, and SEO – at minimum. PR marketing is also a very effective method, especially to advertise your launch, as it can get your brand bought up in a discussion between trusted sources, and in turn, make your brand more trustworthy.
Launching a website and launching a digital business go through the same processes. In fact, you can argue that every website is a business venture, regardless of your business model. Your goal may be to have a large audience of readers, but once you have that audience, you can then monetize your blog. Alternatively, you could have an active business model from the get-go. Either way, these five steps will help you successfully launch your new website.
