Find out What’s Involved, Project Timelines, and the Results You Can Expect
True or false? You can create a professional, high-quality website for your business in 30 days or less.
Answer: Mostly false
While, in a strict sense, it’s not impossible to put together a website in under a month, it’s also not ideal. A quick-turnaround, cookie-cutter service is unlikely to produce the online home you desire. And a DIY process can lead to missed opportunities and, even worse, errors. Since your website is your 24/7/365 sales tool, it’s not a place to risk mistakes or miss out on better ranking. That’s why knowing how to launch a website — and who to involve — is essential to create a customized site that meets expert — and Google’s — criteria.
- Branded to coordinate with your full marketing strategy and efforts
- Optimized according to search engine optimization (SEO) best practices
- Designed and coded for both desktop and mobile
If you want to know how to launch the website of your dreams — one that wows your customers and surpasses your competitors — reject the ready-made website farms or click-and-drag-templates and invest in high-quality, strategic website copy and design.
Why Work with a Marketing Agency on Your Custom Website?
Professional website creation is a meticulous process that involves strategic planning, creative development, and rigorous testing. It often requires skills that the average business owner doesn’t have the time or up-to-date know-how to employ alone.
- Audits and evaluation
- Asset gathering and procurement
- Audience and industry research
- Voice and messaging development
- Professional writing and editing
- SEO research and integration
- Creative design and coding
- Acquisition of certificates and permissions
- Legal standards compliance
- Final proofing and testing
- Hosting and maintenance
As you can see, website creation is a comprehensive process. Depending on client attention and responsiveness, the journey from concept to launch can span from several weeks to months. And it requires the work of a full team of experts. A marketing agency that specializes in custom websites will have a specialized crew assigned to your project.
- Marketing or brand strategist
- Professional content writer
- Online editor or proofreader
- SEO specialist
- Web designer and developer
- Account or project manager
Most importantly, it is our job to plan a website that makes sense for your business and budget today. Perhaps that means just a handful of pages or just a one-page scrolling site. Together, we’ll determine what makes sense now and what will make sense in six to 12 months.
It’s invaluable to have your own dedicated team that knows how to launch your website according to the highest industry standards and that will partner with you to ensure your vision is realized.
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How to Launch a Website in 7 Steps
We’ve already discussed the goals of website creation, and the expert skills involved, but now it’s time to take a deep dive into the stages of website development. Here’s an outline of what you can expect when you work with a marketing agency to create and launch your custom website.
1. Initial Discovery and Planning
When you work with Precise Creative, whatever your project may be, your first step will be a discovery meeting with us. It should be this way with any agency — especially if you’re starting a website project. The discovery meeting is a crucial step where an account manager and marketing strategist come together with you to define your project’s goals and objectives. During this time, the agency should seek to better understand your business, your products and services, and your target audience. It should be the beginning of a trusted partnership that extends throughout your website’s development — and beyond.
Recap: The Website Discovery and Planning Process
- Objectives: To understand your goals and vision, develop an overall strategy and launching-a-website checklist, and investigate key background information, assets, and more
- Key Players: Account manager and/or marketing strategist, along with you and any key decision-makers or contacts on your team
- Time Estimate: Depends on your flexibility, but it will usually take 1‒2 weeks to schedule a time, participate in the meeting, and provide any necessary follow-up
2. Asset and Information Gathering
Once you’ve signed on for a new website, you’ll need to provide your marketing agency with essential assets and information. These will include any of the following that you have.
- Logos and icons: Include all logo versions, such as vertical and horizontal versions, color variations, and transparent variations). When it comes to icons, you also want to provide any commonly used graphic elements your brand owns, such as deconstructed elements and iconography from your logo, your brand mascot, or any other complementary graphics.
- Existing photography: If you have existing high-resolution, well-shot photos of your work, products, facility, or team members, the website designer will need those. If you don’t, we highly recommend that you hire a professional photographer to get a high-quality batch of photos you can use on your website and in other marketing materials. A great marketing agency will also have these resources available to you.
- Brand colors and font styles: If you’ve already been through the process of branding and logo creation, you already have hex colors and font styles that are specific to your brand. Provide your agency with the exact details.
- Brand guidelines and style preferences: Do you have requirements surrounding the use of your name or logos? Do you have a preferred style guide? These are all things the website team will need to know as they build your website.
- Company history and background: When was your company formed? What are your team members’ respective titles? What’s your top-selling product or service? These facts, and more, will be essential for the content writers to include.
- Any additional information: Whether it’s a list of your key competitors, or an overview of your service area, all details about your business are important for keyword research, messaging, and more. Be prepared to offer this information or fill out a Q&A form provided by your agency.
Often, it’s easiest to share these assets and information via a shared folder on a cloud drive like Dropbox. Check with your marketing agency to determine the best process for all involved.
P.S. If you already have an existing website and contracting for an agency to build a new one, you’ll probably need access to the back end of the website as well as your domain registration to point the domain to the new server. Your expert marketing agency will be able to guide you through this process.
Recap: Brand Asset and Information Gathering
- Objective: To provide your website creators with any relevant materials, assets, or information they may need to create and complete your website
- Key Players: You! Or anyone on your team you’ve tapped to handle this
- Time Estimate: This depends largely on you and your team. It can take anywhere from a couple of hours to several weeks. To ensure website production continues smoothly, get the assets and information to your agency as soon as possible.
3. Messaging Development
Once your website goals are outlined, your agency will shift the focus to strategy. This will ensure the website’s voice and messaging tie into your overall brand identity. There are several ways to go about this, but we’ve found that the most comprehensive and consistent process involves creating customer personas, brand voice, and a brand story.
Customer Personas
The creation of customer personas involves researching your existing and target audience so that you can speak directly to them. This will allow website visitors to see you as a brand that truly understands them.
Brand Voice
Voice development sets the tone you will use when you talk to your website visitors. Do you want a voice that’s fun and light-hearted? Or does a more formal, authoritative voice fit your brand better? Setting the standard early on allows you to remain consistent.
Brand Story
A brand story ties all of your messaging together in an easy-to-understand story that comes to life throughout your website content — and woven into any of your marketing copy. By using a customized brand story in your messaging, you can help your website visitors clearly understand how your business is able to uniquely address their challenges and provide the solutions they’ve been looking for.
Recap: Development of Brand Messaging
- Objectives: To define your brand’s customers, voice, and story for effective, consistent messaging
- Key Players: Marketing strategist, content writer, and you or another decision-maker in your business
- Time Estimate: Brand voice development is a shorter process, while the creation of a brand story can take 1‒2 weeks. Customer personas can take longer if you don’t already have existing customer research.
4. Content Creation and Optimization
Content creation of a website is a lengthier phase and has several sub-stages, all of which are necessary to ensure your website is fully optimized, well-written, and precisely targeted.
Keyword Research
This process takes information you’ve provided about your business and industry and determines how it can be incorporated into the phrases searchers are using online. Keyword research is critical to search engine ranking — and to ensure your target audience can find you. Because if you have a beautiful website and nobody finds it, then what’s the point, right?
That’s why accurate keyword research requires the knowledge of an SEO specialist or SEO content writer who knows how to optimize a website, as well as the use of industry-leading SEO tools.
Writing and Optimization
The writer has one of the most critical roles in website creation, so it’s important to choose well. The agency you work with should place an experienced writer on the project, who has extensive SEO and marketing knowledge. Your website’s writer will be responsible for weaving together your brand story and messaging in your brand voice to your target audience. They will also incorporate all on-page SEO to ensure your website is fully optimized.
Internal and External Review
Once your website is written, it should go through a few rounds of internal editing to ensure all content is on-brand, targeted, and error free. After it has been polished, it will be ready for you and your team to conduct a final review. When all changes have been made, the copy will be ready for the website designer.
Recap: The Content Production Process
- Objectives: To identify essential key phrases; create branded, professionally written content; and to optimize the website with on-page SEO
- Key Players: A writer or content specialist, an SEO specialist, editors or proofreaders, the project manager, and the client
- Time Estimate: 2‒4 weeks, depending on the size of the website
5. Design and Development
Just as crucial as content creation, website design and development is another highly involved phase of website creation. Your website design focuses on translating the approved content into visually appealing layouts, while development ensures everything works as it should on both the front and back ends of your website.
Website Design
The design phase of website creation is where the visual and functional elements of a site come together to reflect your brand’s identity and the site’s user experience. Function, layout, and overall design set the tone for how users will interact with your site. Both usability and engagement should be design priorities. A well-executed design not only attracts visitors, but also ensures the site is intuitive and responsive across devices, making it a crucial step before development.
Most often, a marketing agency will begin by providing you with a few different website layouts or wireframes to choose from. These designs should be based on your previous conversations, including websites you like/don’t like, functionality needed, etc.
Website Development
Once the design is complete, it’s time to bring your site to life. How to launch a website WordPress-style requires skilled knowledge. This is also true if you use other platforms, like Squarespace. You want someone who can translate design concepts into reality through coding. That’s why it’s important to hire an experienced website design and marketing agency who will take the design mockup and write the necessary code. This includes front-end, user-facing elements, as well as back-end, server-side processes.
The development phase is vital because it ensures your website operates smoothly, is optimized for performance, and functions seamlessly across different browsers and devices. A solid development process ensures the site is both user-friendly and technically sound.
Recap: Website Design and Website Development Stages
- Objectives: Create visual layouts and design elements based on the approved content and brand guidelines — and translate that design into a functioning website, including front-end and back-end development.
- Key Players: A website designer and developer, and the account or project manager
- Time Estimate: 3‒5 weeks, depending on the scope of the website
6. Testing and Launch
Testing is one of the final steps in how to launch a website. It ensures that your site functions smoothly across all platforms. Just before launch, the website developer and project manager will perform a comprehensive review to make sure everything is perfect.
Recap: Testing and Launching a Website
- Objectives: To ensure the website works across various devices and browsers, and to fix any bugs that may show up. Plus, perform a final review, make adjustments, and launch the website into the world
- Key Players: The website developer, a quality assurance tester (sometimes the same person.), the account or project manager, and the client
- Time Estimate: about 1 day to 1 week
7. Monitoring and Maintenance
The launch of your website is only the beginning. Post-launch activities like monitoring performance and making updates are essential to the continued success of your site. With an agency, you have someone dedicated to monitoring and maintaining your website. This type of oversight helps in many ways.
- Prevents downtime
- Updates plug-ins and themes as needed
- Addresses potential security vulnerabilities
- Ensures a smooth user experience
- Improves response time when issues arise
Without proper monitoring or maintenance, a website may suffer from performance issues or security breaches over time.
Recap: Ongoing Website Monitoring and Maintenance
- Objectives: To track performance, fix post-launch issues, and make regular updates
- Key Players: Web developer and project manager
- Time Estimate: Ongoing
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4 Key Benefits of Working with a Reputable Marketing Agency on Your Website
Your new or refreshed website may take slightly longer when you work with a marketing agency, but if it’s a reputable organization, the process will yield much better results for your business. Here are four big advantages.
- Custom Solutions: An agency will build a website that’s specifically tailored to your business’s needs and goals.
- Quality Content: With a reputable agency, your website will be written and edited by professional writers — not a machine. Plus, all copy is reviewed in-depth to ensure it’s high quality, fully optimized, and on brand.
- Comprehensive Testing: Agencies conduct extensive testing across devices and browsers to ensure the best possible user experience.
- Collaborative Approach: You’ll be a partner with your agency to ensure the website meets your standards and conveys your vision.
Ultimately, the goal of working with an agency is that you’ll have a custom, high-quality website at the end of the process.
What about Other Website Providers?
When it comes to launching a new website, there are many options on the market, ranging from DIY options to click-and-drag template sites to web design “farms.” Many businesses get burned when they take the quick route. They either end up with a cookie-cutter solution that doesn’t fully meet their needs, or they get locked into an inflexible contract with an organization that takes ownership of their site design and assets — even their domain name. That’s truly scary!
Knowing how to launch a website can be daunting. And while website creation is a complex, multi-faceted process, a reputable website and marketing agency like Precise Creative will make it easy for you.
Contact us today to hire a partner who will handle the complex, multi-faceted process of website creation and build a powerful digital presence for your brand.
