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The Pre-Launch Success Plan

October 11, 2004 | View Comments (8) | Category: Web Mastering

Summary: There are certain things that should be in place before your site launches to ensure that your path to success is smoother than if you just launched with a "Welcome here" message and a default template.

There have been many times on this site and on others where the criteria for building a successful blog have been discussed, but I have never gone over what it takes to make a successful site/blog before it launches. I would advise myself to follow these guidelines since I get a bit overzealous with every launch and always seem to launch a bit too early.

The Design

Not surprisingly the design of your site is what gives the visitor their first impression of what to expect. Silly me has taken the lazy route as of late and pretty much tried to make all my new sites ugly as possible. If you visit most of them now you will see that they have the same general design just so the reader doesn't get too sick of looking at them. With regards to Bet Fest a little more time was invested in the design and it has paid off tremendously. I have received numerous emails from people who are interested in Poker and are intrigued by the site and in every email they mention how much they like the design. Design goes a long way in leaving that first impression.

Last week, Nick Denton launched three new sites in his Gawker Media empire and to say the least the sites are horrendous. I am always interested to look at and read new sites, but for Jalopnik I can't even stay for more than a few seconds because the design just turns me away. What's the use of great content if your design chases everyone away? At the very least make sure to stay away from using the default templates that come with your blogging package and avoid over-designing the site as seems to be the case with the new Gawker sites.

In contrast, you have Mighty Goods that was designed by Bowman. I can't say I have that much interest in this site, but the design definitely kept me there longer than the Gawker sites and made me want to at least read the content.

My goal was to go back to a basic (heh, extremely basic) design for all the sites that was readable to the visitor and then I can begin to improve upon each individial one that will help make them distinct. It's like I created 9 new coloring books to play with.

Over at Binary Thoughts they discuss Blog Design & Subscriber Base and ask an interesting question if we have become so fascinated by the design of a site that we have disregarded the content that it possesses. I think it's more along the lines of if you have a design blog and it is well-designed and looks “pretty” then this instantly builds credibility for yourself. On the other hand if you deplore a design like my own with very little use of images and color then the initial impression of the first-time visitor is that my credibility isn't as high as the next guy who has a better looking design. Notice how all of this occurs even before they read the content.

The Content

Over at Business Logs I wrote about pre-launch content and how important it is to a site. In this community you see too many people announcing the launch of their sites and the only content that can be found is a “Welcome to my site” type entry. People bookmark sites with great content. People add sites to their RSS feeds with great content. Not too many people can remember a site with one entry welcoming them.

Try to have at least 4-5 quality entries on your site so at the very least visitors have something to explore and are given a better idea of what to expect in the future from you.

What is it?

Initially when you launch, I think it is a good idea to have a visible description of what your site is about. It's probably better to always have description of what your site is about on the homepage, but over time some people choose to discard it and put it on the homepage.

After your visitors get passed the design of your site they are going to wonder what it is about. If they can't find it or have to search too hard for it they may just leave especially if all you have is one entry. Let them know where they are and why they should be there.

The Review

When it's almost time to launch a site it is easy to get so excited that you launch it, announce it, and only come to find some major errors when people start visiting it. I should know as I seem to do this with every site I create :-). Before you launch you should ask a couple of people to review the site to help point out anything blatantly wrong or missing that you may have overlooked.

Creating a successful site begins before it launches. You may have a plan in place explaining how the site will grow and become popular over time, but how well you are prepared before the launch can dictate how hard you have to work to acheive your goals for the site.

With all of that said I see a million things that need to improve on all of my sites. Both a gift and a curse for writing these kinds of entries I guess.

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