Whether you’ve employed the help of a professional web designer or built it yourself from scratch, a lot of time and effort goes into creating an attractive, informative and functional website. Once you’ve taken all the photos, written all the content and placed them exactly where you think they should go, you might think the hard part is over.
However, all that effort will be lost if you don’t ensure that every piece of content makes it onto the world wide web. Here are a few things you should consider when launching your new website online.
Test everything
Before you let the world see your new website, you should test that everything works. Host your new website on a private server. Then access your own website like you’re the first customer through the doors of a new shop. Make sure the navigation is easy to use, that the text is easy to read, and that every link takes you to the page it should. It can often be hard to pick up on your own typos and spelling mistakes, so get someone else to proofread your work as well. When — and only when — you are completely satisfied there aren’t any errors on the site will it be time to start uploading your site to the world wide web.
Choose a reliable host
Once you’re happy with your website, it’s time to decide how you’re going to host it. When you look up providers online, you’ll find each one offers different plans depending on how many visitors you’re expecting and how much data it will take to store all your website’s files. While it’s important to choose a plan that has enough data and allows enough visitors, this isn’t the only thing you should consider.
Reliability is the most important quality when it comes to choosing a hosting service. Every time there’s a problem, your business could be affected through no fault of your own. The best way to judge whether a hosting provider is reliable is to read up on other people’s experiences with the company. For example, in one of the siteground reviews in 2020, the most popular provider was found to have an uptime of 99.99 percent. That’s because there were only three short outages within six months of testing. That’s closer to perfect than many other providers could dream of.
Once you’ve chosen your host, it’s time to upload the files. There are a number of different ways you can do this, but it’s important whichever way you choose to make sure every file is transferred correctly.
Monitor and update
Once you’ve launched your new site it’s important you continue to monitor its performance. Although you might think you’ve bought a plan big enough for your business needs, check that you’re not nearing your visitor or data limits. If you get close to reaching the limit, contact your provider to change your plan. Failing to do so could stop your website from functioning correctly. It’s also important to continue to update your website with new content once it’s online. Your content might be suitable now, but you’ll need to keep adding new products or blogs to encourage people to return.
