Congratulations! Your hard work has finally come to fruition in the form of a beautiful, functional, intelligent new website. You and your development team have dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's to ensure your site is perfect. Now it's finally time for launch!

At this point, though you're 99% of the way done with your website project, don't relax just yet. The process of launching a new or redesigned website is critical to the success of the development project—and your marketing campaigns.

Follow these 10 website launch tips to conclude your project with a seamless go-live transition.

1. Agree on the launch timing

Discuss—with all those concerned—the best time to launch the new site. That discussion should initially take place at the beginning of the project, so you can establish and meet deadlines. But when it gets closer to the actual launch, be sure to reach agreement on the best date, day of the week, and time of day to go live. Should you launch over the weekend? In the middle of the night when traffic is low? Agree on a launch time that works for everyone.

2. Back it up

Back up your current website before launching the new one. Regular backups should be part of your routine web maintenance anyway, but they are essential before launching a major redesign. Just in case anything goes awry during the launch, you would be able to revert to your old site. More than likely... you won't need it; but if you do, you'll be glad you took this easy step.

3. Prep for the technical transition

There are myriad technical elements to consider when transitioning out of the dev environment, including configuring the DNS to point to the proper hosting provider, updating all hard-coded URLs to lead to the new domain name, and updating the WordPress/Site Address URLs (if you are developing a WordPress-powered website). The exact processes vary, depending on the location of your dev site (different server vs. sub-domain on current server vs. sub-folder on current server), so always consult an experienced Web developer and ensure there is a plan in place.

4. Make sure you're seen by the search engines

Before launch, ensure the entire site is set up to be indexed by search engines. This is a critical step if you want your new site to be visible in organic search rankings. Go one step further by submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console to ensure Google can crawl all the pages you want indexed. Oh, and Bing Webmaster Tools, too.

5. Set up 301 redirects

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10 Website Go-Live Tips to Ensure a Smooth Launch

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Brian Shilling

Brian Shilling is branding and digital marketing director at Clarity Quest Marketing, a full-service agency for healthcare and technology companies.

LinkedIn: Brian Shilling

Twitter: @Shilling_Brian