Welcome to the final installment of Wireframe to Website. If you’re just joining us check out Post One: Strategy & Wireframing and Post Two: Design & Development.
Site Launch Preparation
Now that we have an approved website we are ready to go into the pre-launch mode. This is the time when you check, double check and triple check your staging site. Check all links. Check all pages for anything silly that may have been missed along the way. Make sure the favicon is in place and ready to brand the site.
We set our client up with hosting at HostGator and secured all the credentials. (Marketing Press usually sets up the client’s hosting account, because nothing is worse than waiting for credentials when you are ready to launch.) With the credentials and the domain registration information, we can point the host to the correct place to take the site live.
To migrate this site to live we decided to use BackupBuddy. BackupBuddy makes it easy to move sites from a staging domain (abc.stagingdomain.com to livedomain.com) Back the site up and download the importbuddy script and now we’re ready to go.
Site Launch
Now that we are confident everything is taken care of, we are ready to get the new site live. Upload the site backup and the importbuddy file, file the script, follow the directions and you’re live.
Now that the site is live we are close to being done, but not done yet. Lastly, we installed and configured Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to make sure the site is on the right track once it’s live. DONE. LIVE. SUCCESS.
Post Launch
Our post launch process is all about analytics. We pay close attention to Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to make sure the site is performing as expected. Look for an increase of traffic, site indexing and other indicators of a healthy site.
This project was not only fun but a great success. Two weeks after launch American Auto Distributing is experiencing a 15.6% conversion rate. That’s great to hear. This was a great project to be a part of — Congrats American Auto!