What is Involved in a Website Launch, Part 1

Managing a new website launch is quite an exciting project. I have found there to be multidisciplinary specialties involved about which I want to write today and in the next few posts.

If you are a business owner and want to be the general contractor for your site launch, these are things you should be thinking about before you ever begin.

What is the purpose of the site

If you don’t know where you are going,
any road will get you there. — Lewis Carroll

If you don’t have purpose in life, your days become filled with stuff that doesn’t really matter.

It’s the same way with your website. If you don’t know its purpose, it is easy to create content that isn’t really useful to your readers, I call this visual clutter.

Some websites are created for aesthetics, some to give information, some to raise awareness and others to sell products and services.

Every website has the potential for purpose. What is yours?

What action do you want your reader to take

If you could summarize in one word the mood of your prospects when they are searching online, I agree with Gerry McGovern who says that word would be “impatient.”

Think of your own web browsing habits. When you are searching online it is usually to gather information, complete a task, make a decision, right?

With this in mind, what action do you want your readers to take?  It could be join your newsletter list, contact you for a 20 minute consultation, download your white paper, join your coaching group, purchase your book. If someone hits the back button, you have lost them, maybe forever. Make it easy for your readers to complete a task, even if it’s not the one they first intended.

The two things I see over and over again in terms of actions are vagueness at one extreme, or too many choices at the other.

Imagine walking into a fast food restaurant and staring at the menu. Would be easier to order from a menu of three things or thirty? (I hope you said three).

We have too many choices in life and I think this mentality creeps into our websites. Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of the 2004 book, “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less”  says “…one of three things is likely to occur when people have too many decisions to make — consumers end up making poor decisions, are more dissatisfied with their choices or become paralyzed and don’t choose at all.”
[source LA Times, Too Many Choices Can Tax the Brain, Research Shows].

What action to you want your reader to take?

What results do you expect from your site

The action you choose should be tied to the results you want to achieve from the site. Is it an increase in qualified prospects? Or is it actual sales of a product or service?

The clearer you are in this area, the easier it will be for you to write your content and work with your designer. Design and content need to fit together like two peas in a pod, and they are different skill sets.

Your job as the website owner is to first, understand this, and second, be as clear as possible about your purpose, actions and expectations for results so the design and content mesh like butter on bread.

What result(s) are you anticipating from  your website?

Next up, What is Involved in a Website Launch, Part 2, but in the meantime, what are your thoughts?