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
-
Re-Branding Website
Hi everyone! I'm currently in the process of re-branding a website, and am really worried about the SEO consequences of doing so... The site I'm working on has recently been seeing a large increase of organic search traffic (almost 25% each month for the past 3 months) and I want to do my best to avoid screwing that up in the process of changing the aesthetic of the site. A couple specific questions I have are: Does changing the stylesheet, but none of the on-page content affect SEO? Would condensing menu items (i.e. putting all services under 1 item named "services") have a positive or negative effect? Neither? Any advice, tips, or previous experiences on this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Branding | | Derrald0 -
Content Advice for SEO Newbies
Hi all, I've been asked to put together a presentation as part of an internal series for marketers within the company that don't know much about SEO, but want to learn the basics and contribute. My topic for this one is on-page SEO/content marketing's role in SEO. I have lots of ideas for this already, but I thought I'd turn to the Moz forum to get some feedback and help me prioritize the points I hit. So, if you could give SEO newbies working on content for a company site, blog, etc. just one piece of advice, what would it be? Looking forward to seeing your responses. Thanks, Andrew
Branding | | SafeNet_Interactive_Marketing0 -
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 -
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 -
Re-code website and start from scratch?
Hi Community, one of my sites was affected by panda penguin and then EMD updates last year. All our google 1st page rankings were lost and we have spent the last few months trying to recover the situation. Changed content, meta tags, meta titles, disavowed links, changed navigation structure among other things. We are now at a point where we are thinking of scrapping the whole thing and re-coding the site. Before we make the decision I wanted to ask what the main risks and points are that we need to consider. Are there any useful guides to help us make an informed judgment? Also, if we were to re-do the site and also change the domain name what are the implications of this and what needs to be considered. I'd really appreciate some advice as this is a major step for us. Thanks
Branding | | BipSum0 -
Can we publish two guest posts on one domain with same pen name but different linking website?
Can we publish two guest posts on one domain with same pen name but different linking website? Actually I have been doing guest posts with pen name “Jane Andrew” for “abc.com”(bit old and well performing website). Now I need to post for a new website “xyz.com” on some old domains (where I have already published my articles) so the situation is that I want domains and pen name to remain same but linking website would be different. I had few questions in my mind regarding that and I would be grateful if you help me getting the required information. Is it right from SEO, branding and marketing point of view? How Google interprets this? Is there any harm for the old well performing website or for the new one? And also both websites are owned and managed by the same owner.
Branding | | shaz_lhr0 -
Tips on building buzz and getting traffic for new sites
I have an idea for a new "socia"l website. No its not a facebook or anything like that, but I feel it fills a void in a particular niche. The problem I am having is figuring out a marketing plan to get people to sign up. When you're starting a new social website like this its kind of important for it too feel popular and you need users to make it feel popular and useful. Which kind of gets you into a chicken or the egg type scenario. There are a few keywords I intend on doing SEO for, but I don't think pure SEO will make this community popular. Some ideas I have: Creative "tell a friend" strategy that builds incentive to get friends signed up like win an ipad or something like that. I also want to make it easy to tell friends, so you can import contacts from facebook, twitter, and email contacts rather than typing in all those emails by hand. Targeting a few blogs related to this niche hoping that they will interview me about the website. Advertising on forums and blogs related to my niche. Making the site simple, visually appealing and intuitive so users can dive right in without thinking. Making a good enough product to where the site can get buzz on active subreddits and hackernews. I'm a software engineer by nature, so marketing isn't a strong suite of mine, but I'm no rookie to building popular websites either (just been a while). I'd like to get some ideas from the seomoz community on this. Thanks.
Branding | | NormanNewsome1 -
Copycat websites
Hello, Do you know if there is anything you can do against a copycat website? By copycat I mean a website which uses our brand / domain name to steal our brand traffic. The reason I ask is a new site recently launched with which is optimised to take some of our brand traffic: Site tile - www.my<ourbrandname>.co.uk</ourbrandname> Description - For when I need <ourbrandname></ourbrandname> They gave no physical address or email addresses to funnel customers through an enquiry form which got me suspesious so when I checked the IP address in the MOZ Toolbar and did a WhoIs check on the IP address it brought up one of our main competitors websites. Anyone got an experiences of this and know what can be done?
Branding | | RikkiD220