Launching a new website for your business or passion project is an exciting step in growing your brand. Your website is your home base – a place to share your services, nurture your leads, and connect with your local community. But what do you actually need to get the ball rolling on the new site?
Whether you’ve created websites in the past or this is your very first one, we recommend pulling together these 6 items to hit the ground running on your new website.
1. Branding
Branding will help guide the style and design of your new site. These items include your business logo, brand colors, and any fonts you want to work with. If you don’t have specific colors or fonts in mind, Launch Kits will pull appropriate colors for you.
Looking for a pro tip? We love the Coolors generator to help nail down a cohesive color palette. As you picking colors, be sure to choose one contrasting color for buttons and CTA on your site.
2. Website Copy
While you don’t necessarily need to hire a writer or pull together pages and pages of content for your website, it is really helpful to have a few sentences written out for each page of the website. This includes your about page info with your business story, passion, or mission, a few sentences about your services and offerings, what the process looks like for customers to engage in services with you, and a friendly message to those who wish to contact you.
3. Photos
Photos can help communicate your services on your website and help users envision them working with you. While original photos can be great to use (especially for those in visual industries), stock photos can be a great option, too.
We recommend Envato Elements, Unsplash, and Pexels to our customers to find high-quality free stock photos. Simply search for some keywords relevant to your industry and keep in mind a cohesive vision for your website. Having 15-20 photos ready for your new website is ideal for starting out. And remember, photos can always be added, updated, and swapped out down the line.
4. Business info
This information should be fairly easy for you to track down, but some people can overlook the importance of having these details readily available for their website. Keep on hand your business contact information including your phone number, email address, and physical address (if applicable for business), your business hours, and any privacy policies or disclaimers.
Also accompanying your business information, it’s always helpful to have logins pull together for any third-party accounts you want to integrate into your new site. This may include an email marketing signup, a scheduling tool, or an e-commerce payment processor.
5. Testimonials
A great way to build trust and establish a positive reputation with potential customers is through client testimonials and reviews. These can be from previous clients who sent you thank you emails or from online reviews off platforms like Google My Business or Facebook.
Pro Tip: Testimonials are one of the best ways to build brand trust!
If you offer multiple services, it can also be helpful to select specific client reviews for each of your service offerings.
6. Resources
While resources can be added to the site after it launches, we don’t want you to forget how important these can be. Resources include anything from downloads and applications to graphics, blog posts, and press releases.
Housing resources on your website is a really simple way to direct users to the relevant information they’re looking for without having to always email attachments back and forth.
Fresh, ongoing content such as blog posts and press releases can also help your website’s SEO presence and connect new users to your content and services.
How to get started
If you’re ready to start designing your new website but aren’t sure where to start, Launch Kits can help you get your website up and running in as little as 5 days. We support you in all of these areas and offer options for every budget.
If you’re ready to get started, choose your Launch Kit today!
