Whether you’re launching a new domain name or migrating a site to Magento 2, it’s natural to take a sigh of relief once your new site goes live. However, that’s when the continuous effort begins to get traffic and make this new site convert to its highest potential. These are the important steps we recommend merchants take after building a new website. Some of these may seem unconventional, but they are vital post-launch tasks to help ensure a successful eCommerce site.

Collect data

The absolute first thing you need to do, preferably before even going live, is set up all of the data tracking you can. This will ensure that you’ll be able to make data-based decisions with your marketing and site changes. You just spent a lot of time and money designing a site based off of emotion and your preferences, but there could be a lot of changes necessary based on the data of how people actually engage with your site design.

We suggest using Google Tag Manager (GTM) for most tracking, which allows you to manage tags without making multiple changes to your site. Google Analytics, PPC conversion tracking, remarketing tags, most email marketing software and a number of other tracking snippets can all be run through GTM. More advanced utilities, like conversion rate optimization and A/B testing tools, might need to be run directly on your site via a module dedicated to that activity.

Setting up your data tracking also helps you get ahead of the curve on audience building within Google and Bing Ads, as well as email marketing software. Even if you’re not utilizing those types of marketing campaigns just yet, installing the tracking tags on your site to gather visitor data so your audience is populated when you are ready to begin a paid search or email campaign. Momentum is a very real phenomenon in successful digital marketing campaigns, and having reliable data populated within your different systems helps get the ball moving.

Email Your Audience

Send an announcement email to your existing contacts. We recommend you send it using a system that can track clicks and engagement to start collecting that data! Previous customers or visitors that are familiar with your brand are more likely to interact with your new site and tell you what they do and don’t like about it, even if it’s just through the user engagement data you gather.

If you aren’t currently running any email campaigns, consider the old Chinese proverb about planting trees – the best time to start email was 15 years ago. The 2nd best time is now.

The easiest way to start with an email campaign is to integrate an email marketing software with your website that can automate messaging and has built-in campaigns such as shopping cart abandonment and welcome emails. The less work it takes to implement email communications, the less intimidating it seems. 

Don’t pay for useless traffic.

Add traffic slowly so that you can review the data and know how to convert it. Conversions are the reason an eCommerce website exists.

Design for both looks and function. Your site needs to make people feel like sticking around long enough to be amazed by how the it’s so friendly and easy to use. Don’t pay for traffic that doesn’t convert, but identify if it’s the quality of traffic or the site or the landing page that is hindering people from engaging.

Merchandise

Great product images and video are what contribute to a great website moreso than the theme or design. Work on optimizing generic images and descriptions, then add your own branded media such as videos, reviews, or other product feedback that only you as a manufacturer or distributor or retailer can provide.

Create content so good that it deserves to be shared on Facebook and Twitter, and be at the top of the search engines – that’s how you become an authority in your industry.

Work on Your Brand

Make customers familiar with your name and logo. Start a branding campaign on social channels, display campaigns and remarketing ads.

People love a success story – share yours, some of your employees’ and your customers’ stories in product content and highlight posts.

Deliver a Stellar Customer Experience

Delivering an awesome customer experience is the best competitive advantage you can have over your competition. Understand that your site is just part of the customer experience – get your team excited about continuous improvement on the new site. Often times we see internal teams at odds with each other over new site design or features: some people don’t like change, others drive it and don’t understand the hesitancy. Getting your entire team on board with sharing ideas and improving the website itself and the customer experience overall will help with employee and customer satisfaction.

Test Everything

Circling back around to collecting data, the entire reason you track as much data as you can is so that you can use that data to make better, more informed marketing and business decisions. There’s a mindset to get into when managing a website, especially a new design, even if it’s representing a mature brand, and that’s to always be testing everything from PPC ad copy to product pricing. There are intelligent CRO utilities to help provide data and A/B testing functionality to your site, but don’t forget you should also be testing messaging within your advertising and email campaigns

Although your team can be emotionally connected to a new site, the rest of the world only cares about solving their own problems. Don’t let the project you just launched lull you into a false sense of relaxation. Celebrate your victory with the new site, and then get back at it to market and tune it to best suit your customers’ needs.

To learn more about how to optimize your new website, or if you’re in the market for a new eCommerce site, contact us today. In business for over 20 years, our certified Magento developers know the eCommerce site art and science front-to-back and can help you make the absolute most of your site.