Tips and advice for startup website launch
-
Hi guys
I'm looking for tips and advice to help prevent a startup website launch from embarrassment or disaster.
Couple of examples I have so far are:
- Test contact and download forms
- Check website for duplicate content, lorem ipsum and missing content
- Check page load speed
What would be your best advice/tip(s) be?
Thanks
Anthony
@Anthony_Mac85
P.S. Just to be clear, I'm not looking for advice on how to growth hack a startup website launch.
-
Hey there!
Launching a startup website is an exciting venture, and I'm thrilled to share some tips and advice based on my experience with my e-commerce website, Leather4Ever, which has been running on WordPress for the past four years.
Choose the Right Platform:
As you rightly mentioned, WordPress has proven to be a reliable platform for managing an e-commerce website. Its user-friendly interface, extensive plugin support, and customizable features make it a great choice for startups. However, it's crucial to explore and choose a platform that aligns with your specific business needs.Mobile Responsiveness:
Ensure that your website is optimized for mobile devices. With a significant portion of internet users accessing websites through their smartphones, having a mobile-friendly design is imperative for a positive user experience and search engine rankings.Quality Content:
Content is king! Create compelling, relevant, and high-quality content for your website. This includes product descriptions, blog posts, and any other information that adds value to your audience. This not only engages your visitors but also contributes to better search engine visibility.SEO Strategies:
Implementing strong SEO strategies is essential for driving organic traffic to your site. Focus on keyword research, meta tags, and creating SEO-friendly URLs. Regularly update your content and stay informed about the latest SEO trends to stay competitive.User-Friendly Navigation:
Make sure your website's navigation is intuitive and user-friendly. Visitors should be able to find what they're looking for without any confusion. Clear menus, a logical site structure, and a search bar can significantly enhance the user experience. -
What you need to know when you start a big startup. We have the means to launch, as well as an approximate idea. But we haven't got to the point of developing and finding investors yet; we want to work through all these stages correctly.
-
yes you can use so many options to do this task like you can add some blog posts about it you can learn more about it here.
-
Hey guys
Just wanted to thank you all for your suggestions and let you know that all of your suggestions are included in the final blog post here.
I've thanked you all at the end
Thanks again, I really appreciate it.
Anthony
-
Great shout Craig. Every now and then I'll find a "#" link on live websites. Looks careless and lazy!
-
Hey Dirk
Great advice! I'm a big fan of Screaming Frog too. A handy free tool especially for small startup websites.
Thanks for commenting
-
This is a good point. I am working on a group of sites on wpengine. So dev was using something like name.staging.wpengine. When they went live the directories etc switched to the live domain but scattered throughout the site within the content the URLs remained the same. ScreamingFrog is your friend.
-
When I prototype a website I use a lot of # href links. I would suggest a search through the source code for "a href="#"" thus removing any of these "dead" links before you go to production.
Note to self: remember to actually do this yourself.
-
Do a full crawl of your site with a tool like Screaming Frog. If you configure the spider to respect robots.txt & canonicals it will behave like google bot you will see if all your pages are indexed properly. The tool also gives you valuable info on things like H1, Title, Meta descriptions (and standard filters to check if they are missing, duplicates, too long/short,...). It shows your internal site structure (number of clicks needed to get to each page) and the size of your images. You can even use it to check if the analytics tag is present on each page using a custom filter.
It's not free if you use it in spider mode (the free version only spiders 500 URI's) - but if you have a sitemap, you could also do a crawl based on the list of your url's (which is free, regardless the number of url's). Limitation is that you don't get the structure and the internal links, but if it is a brand new site and not too big, that shouldn't really be a problem.
rgds
Dirk
-
Not forgetting our own personal mobile devices too
-
We've used all of those
Others we use are Bootcamp, Virtualbox and we also use inspect element in chrome to emulate devices and remote inspect element using Safari.
-
BrowserStack is the one we use--it seems to work pretty well.
-
We have a few tools that our developers use when they need to - BrowserStack, Virtual Box, VM Ware, iOS simulator, etc. - most of which are pretty standard. Do you all use anything different?
-
Love all of these Fuel Interactive! All of which we do here too so it's pleasing to hear other agencies doing the same
I think cross-browser and cross-device QA is extremely important given the browsing habits of the modern day consumer.
Do you use any tools for cross-browser and cross-device QA?
-
Hey Michael,
Yes, an incorrect robots.txt is definitely more common than you would think.
I guess the overarching tip to the fetch and render function would be to register your site with Webmaster Tools and make use of their tools.
Thanks for sharing!
Anthony
-
Linda - awesome tips!
Especially number 1. User testing is something that just isn't on some people's radar, yet it can unveil plenty of unforeseen usability issues.
Thanks for sharing
Anthony
-
Definitely agree with the "check robots.txt" comment - it really does happen more often than people like to admit.
I would also be sure the website has any relevant schema markups implemented to give search engines as much information about your site as possible.
Check the website in different browswers / different devices to make sure nothing looks wonky and everything functions properly.
Double check / audit title tags & meta descriptions (this can easily be done by using a crawling software like Screaming Frog or something similar)
Be sure any tracking you want to use (Ex: Google Analytics) is properly in place. Also make sure the site is verified with Google Webmaster tools if that is something you want to monitor (which you should). Submit sitemap to Google Webmaster tools - will need XML version.
Check for any broken links and check to be sure the site has any redirects / canonical tags needed in place.
Also definitely recommend user testing and getting feedback from people not involved with the website.
Some of these might not be user-specific, just wanted to give a general rundown of things we often check.
Hope this helps!
-
"Check your robots.txt, meta noindex, and other exclusions to make sure you are not blocking your own content (once you are live)."
Yes, this is far more common than people like to admit. I'd also add it can be useful to use the Fetch and Render function in Webmaster Tools to check what Google can see once live. Occasionally robots.txt needs a tweak to stop blocking a particular resource.
-
-
Invite test users who were not involved with the development to try out the website and see what they find.
-
Check your robots.txt, meta noindex, and other exclusions to make sure you are not blocking your own content (once you are live).
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Advice on how to improve our Facebook movement
Hello, We recently launched our facebook page found here. Our website is here. We give away 30% of our products and we donate to help bees, wolves, and people discovering themselves. I am wondering how, without spending too much money (we have some money) or for free to improve our Facebook campaign. We sell orgonite, art-like devices that absorb negative electromagnetic waves and help heal people with health conditions. We also are soon launching a little known powerful mineral supplement campaign (MMS - Master Mineral Supplement) to help people with cancer in return for donations if and only if it helps a lot. Our budget for that post is $100. Let me know how we can, for free or little money, improve what we're doing. Any advice is appreciated. We're trying to do a lot of good for the community. Thank you.
Branding | | BobGW0 -
Getting Traffic to a New Website - Looking for Ideas
I am working with a company that is launching a brand new website (for a new business they are creating). I am wondering what things people have done to try to start building traffic and/or awareness for the site.
Branding | | TopFloor0 -
New Product. New Brand. Gmail/Authorship Questions. Need Advice.
I'm in the process of developing a new product and brand name and would like to create all the social media accounts (FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc), including G+ and want it to have it's own Gmail ID like [email protected], so I can set up all accounts using this Gmail ID and if needed down the road, have someone else help manage the accounts so they have that login and my my main Gmail login. My question is, does Google frown upon setting up new Gmail IDs under the same name "Patrick McCoy" as I have my name tied to my personal Gmail account and my company's Gmail account "whiteboardcreations@gmail" both with G+ pages and URLs of /+PatrickMcCoy1 and /+PatrickMcCoy2 respectively. I'd like to have Authorship associated with the new product website and also want the new product to have it's own G+ Business Page to post updates, info, etc., which is why I'm getting a little confused on how I'd do it the right way, What would you do or does it really matter... can my new Gmail account of ABCXYZ@gmail just be /+PatrickMcCoy3 which is associated to my new product/brand name? Thank you and look forward to the feedback!
Branding | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
If someone leaves a review on a website, is there any way to syndicate this out to 3rd party review sites?
a client of mine receives loads and loads of review on their website but few on 3rd party review type sites. i want to be able to push reviews left on client site out to these other sites. is this possible?
Branding | | Christoffa0 -
Competitors' dummy websites --- What SEO (or other?) strategy is this?
I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons. But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal. What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on? Your insights most appreciated!
Branding | | Novos_Jay1 -
Hotel website domain
I work on a project for a hotel website and look up domain names right now. But I am now not sure wether I should go for a branding of the hotel name in the domain name (e.g. "bellavistahotel.com") or pick the location ("berlinhotel.com") or a mix (e.g. "bellavistaberlin.com). What would be your recommendation? The content (text, photos, videos) I have is a lot about the location and the hotel itself. I want to connect the Hotel page afterwards with Knowem to hundreds of social networks. My tendency is to go for a branding. Is that a good idea? Thanks for the help.
Branding | | reisefm0 -
Blog - separate domain or current website?
I have created a business blog purely to gain higher rankings for particular keywords which then has links pointing to the product that I am trying to sell. My question... Is it better to have this blog hosted on the same domain or shall I move it to a separate domain which will help with backlinks? Any advice would be appreciated?
Branding | | petewinter0 -
Looking for examples of a B2B brand spinning off B2C products on to separate websites
Does anyone have any good examples or case studies? Right now I'm working on a site with both B2B and B2C products crowded onto one site. I'd love to find some examples of companies that have built their online B2B brand separately from their consumer products. I found the Constructive Playthings case study on Marketing Sherpa but nothing else.
Branding | | TexaSEO0