How to Create the Perfect Website Launch Announcements

Creative Entrepreneurs, Interior Designers, Photographers, Tips & Tricks, Website Design, Wedding Professionals

Did you think your website launch was just a one-day event? Think again, my friend!

While you could press publish on your site and unveil it to the world on a specific day, you can also roll out your website launch over multiple weeks.

Now, you might be thinking, “Sarah, why would I want to do that? It sounds like more work and I already have a lot on my plate.”

As a fellow creative entrepreneur, I totally get it. You only want to work on tasks that will increase your leads and generate revenue. What if I told you, though, that you’d be hurting your lead generation opportunities by NOT having a website launch strategy?

Some of the benefits of treating your website launch as a multiple-week event is:

It’ll increase the buzz and excitement around your launch.
It’ll feel more like a big reveal at the end when you give them sneak peeks.
Your followers won’t miss your announcements when you post them several times.

As you get ready to release your website, here is an easy guide you can follow to create the best content leading up to the big launch.

Things to share before your website launch

This is our time to build buzz around your launch and let people know what they can expect. It’s important to keep a little mystery in this stage, which is usually two to three weeks before your website launch date. You don’t want to reveal everything upfront. Instead, every few days, you can tease out another aspect of your website. I’ll give you an idea of what this can look like.

Share behind-the-scenes stories

Take this opportunity to tell stories of what it’s been like to put your website together. You may not realize it, but there are so many strategic decisions that go into a website launch.

For example, when you write your website copy, you’ll first take a deep dive into discovering who you are, who you want to serve, and how you want to serve them. Then you choose an aesthetic and cultivate your visual style when you create your visual branding and logo. These choices (and more) set the tone for the rest of your website.

Why not take this opportunity to share the “why” behind the changes you’re making to the website? Trust me, it makes for really interesting content! It also helps your audience feel like they get to peek behind the curtains and learn about what really goes on in your business.

Here are some of the things you might want to share:

Why you chose specific fonts, colors, or other visual elements
Any tweaks you are making to your products or services
How the way you sell your offerings is changing
How your brand voice is evolving with the relaunch
What you discovered in writing your website copy
How you planned out your brand photoshoot
Why you decided to add new pages to your website
The way you are re-organizing your website

That’s just a start! Take a moment to think of your most significant discoveries during the pre-launch process and get creative about how you could share this with your followers.

Give a preview

Who doesn’t like to preview something before it goes live? Now, that doesn’t mean you have to show them a whole page on your website. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend doing that anyway.

Instead, you could tease out a certain part of your website or brand that you feel comfortable with revealing. For many of my clients, this typically means selecting one brand photo to share or giving a sneak peek of their rebranded logo.

That way, you aren’t keeping all of the surprises hidden until the big reveal day. This will give your audience a small look into what you’ve been working on, helping them envision what could be behind the curtain of your launch. This will certainly increase their excitement and anticipation leading up to the launch.

Host a giveaway

Leading up to your launch, you’ll be sharing stories and giving interesting previews into what you’ve been working on. The only thing more exciting than this? Offering the chance to win something! Most of us can’t resist free stuff (myself included!).

While I’ve seen people give away $25 Amazon and Starbucks gift cards for their website launches, I’d challenge you to think outside the box. By this, I mean offering something you plan to sell on your website.

This can work for product creators and service providers alike! If you are a business coach, you might want to give away two 1:1 coaching call sessions. If you are a course creator, it might make more sense for you to give away five spots to your mini-course. The sky’s the limit here!

One thing to keep in mind when you host giveaways is to follow promotion guidelines. Let’s keep it legal, friends! Also, it might be fun to reveal the big winners on your launch day so it makes people want to check out your new website even more.

Things to share during your website launch

You’ve done a great job so far with strategizing how you want to increase buzz leading up to your launch, but now the time is here. That’s right; it’s time to reveal your new website! As you do this, here are a few things you can do to keep it interesting:

Create a website mockup graphic

I create animated website mockup graphics when my clients launch their Showit websites (see an example here). When you press play, the video scrolls through the client’s new homepage. Creating these graphics is a fun way for me to celebrate with them and put their new look on display in my Instagram feed.

Another way you can create eye-catching launch mockups is to input your website design into a static image. It’s even better if the background fits your brand photos, much like these examples from my own photoshoots.

You have a lot of creative freedom with how you want to present your new website. The more visual your example is, the more it will stand out in your followers’ feeds. You’ve got this!

Write an interesting caption

Every beautiful image on Instagram needs a caption that’s created with just as much intention. This is your chance to tell your audience all about what they can expect from your website.

Since you have already told them about the story behind the relaunch, you don’t have to try to squeeze it in here. It’ll feel like such a relief! Instead, you’ll focus more of your attention on creating a list of things you added to the website and give your audience reasons why they should click out of Instagram to go check it out.

Before you publish your Instagram post and add your hashtags, make sure you thank any collaborators in your caption. This could be your website copywriter, designer, developer, coach, or anyone else who helped you in the relaunch process. They’ll really appreciate it, and you’ll get less questions from followers about who helped you create the new site. You may also get additional promotion opportunities from your collaborators in response!

Offer a special free resource

You don’t want visitors to check out your website for a moment on launch day and then click out of it, never to return again. Talk about a heartbreaking situation!

Let’s use this bump in website traffic to our advantage, shall we? One of the best ways to stay in touch with these visitors to have them join your email list. Once they become an email subscriber, you can send them a series of welcome emails to invite them into your brand community. Not only that, but you can regularly communicate with them whenever you want.

Unlike social media posts, emails are delivered directly to your subscribers’ inboxes so you don’t have to worry about them missing your messages. This way, you’ll be able to nurture your relationships with email subscribers well after your website launch. This is a great long-term growth strategy for your business.

If you’re sold on using email marketing to connect with your audience, I’d recommend offering a freebie on your website. This will allow you to give upfront value to your visitors, encouraging them to become loyal brand advocates.

These freebies are usually called lead magnets, which is just a fancy marketing term to describe the free resource you’re giving audience members in exchange for their contact information (or, in this case, their email address). If you’re not sure what kind of lead magnet you should create for your website launch, I wrote a guide that outlines the five most common lead magnet types you can choose from.

Ready to launch your next website?

If so, I’m cheering you on! There’s nothing more exciting than unveiling the website you’ve been working tirelessly on to the world. In the meantime, here is a list of other resources you may want to dig into before you press the publish button.

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