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
-
Why is Google appending a different website's brand name to the end of SERP title?
I've recently been shown some SERP results where Google is appending a different website's brand name to the end of the SERP title. It's actually rewriting the brand's name to that of the other website. (This is obviously not ideal.) Why would this be? The other website doesn't even stock the same product, so there shouldn't be any confusion there. But even if it did, many websites stock the same products. Just confusing...
Branding | | Ria_1 -
Search website bar
I've noticed when you search business such as Pier 1, William Sonoma, they offer a "Search william-sonoma.com" search bar within the organic search. You can see it when you google William Sonoma. So, the question is, how does that get displayed? Is it something a business can include or is it something that Google will provide if they feel the need too? Appreciate any feedback. Thanks.
Branding | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Launching a Reseller
I was wondering if anybody out there has any experience launching a website for a company that is a reseller of another product or service. I'm wondering what is the best strategy for handling the content for product and service descriptions? Pulling the content off of our partners site doesn't seem like it would be the best strategy.
Branding | | bcglf0 -
US Based Website Wanting to Sell in Canada
Hi All, I work for an small e-commerce company that is looking to expand our customer base to include Canadian customers. At the moment, we do serve some Canadian customers, but haven't made a concerted effort to capture this market and are looking to lay the groundwork for this new venture. With this in mind I have a few questions I am hoping to get some help on. Please see below. 1. From the viewpoint of a potential Canadian customer, how is it best to them know that we sell and ship to Canada? If you have examples of companies that do this well, please share! 2. From an SEO standpoint, how is it best for a US company to target Canadian customers? In the past, our websites have relied heavily on organic search results to drive traffic and we would like to continue this trend as we venture into Canada. If you have any other feedback, tips or suggestions of questions we should be asking ourselves before starting this, please feel free to add them! Thank you for your help!
Branding | | airnwater0 -
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 -
Do you think my simple design website reflects my product better or worse?
Its been suggested my holiday cottage letting website maybe could do with a professional polish up and maybe restructure and navigation and if it would improve bookings I wouldn't hesitate. My only thought pattern is that this particular website is certainly not high-tech (this website was designed by me in Dreamweaver) I have a great guy working for me which is much better web design than me and technically more capable of producing a professional standard website, but with this new sideline I'm presently a small home-based company currently only letting eight old cottages. My thinking was keep the website simple, personal and homely for the moment. http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ The website tends to be competing against large agencies which have often hundreds of properties on their books and you have to go through their filtering system to find the small number of properties that might be of interest. I can see that if I was selling large quantities of electrical equipment or something similar you just in a very polished well-designed website. The feedback I get from customers is that like the website and they like to know they can get hold of the person behind it. Which direction would you go? polished professional company styled WordPress website or simple design website with lots of pictures and descriptions. If I ever hit the big time and have hundreds of cottages I would have to join the design and more complicated navigation of the other agencies websites but whilst I’m small maybe not? Thanks for reading Alan
Branding | | whitbycottages0 -
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 -
Why does Tripadvisor rank higher than official hotel website?
Hello, I am trying to figure out why Tripadvisor is ranking higher for "Royal Lahaina Resort" than our official site RoyalLahaina.com website. Could any of you help here. It is confusing because our RoyalKona.com and our HawaiiHotels.com (Hotel Chain Group) ranks 1st but for one of the hotels it comes in second to trip advisor. Please help!
Branding | | TSpike10