5 Steps YOU SHOULD

FOLLOW WHEN RELAUNCHING

YOUR WEBSITE

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About Exygy

Introduction: About This Guide

Step #1: Planning Your Website Relaunch

Step #2: Kicking Off Your Website Development

Step #3: Managing Your Site's Content

Step #4: Launching Your New Site

Step #5: Post Launch Optimizations

Contact Us

Table of Contents

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Exygy is a software design and build agency in San Francisco, CA. The team at Exygy creates exceptional software for the world's leading organizations -- change-makers, government, startups, enterprise business, and more.

From strategy to user experience design, visual design, and engineering, Exygy uses an agile, human-centered approach to design and build beautiful and powerful software quickly and cost effectively.

The organizer of the San Francisco WordPress Meetup since 2008, Exygy has been a leader in the WordPress community since the early days of the platform. A strong WordPress proponent, Exygy works with many other technologies including Ruby on Rails, iOS, Android, Node, and much more.

SOME EXAMPLES OF EXYGY CLIENTS INCLUDE:

WikimediaGoogle.orgZendeskThe UN World Food ProgramWestfield Groups (WFG)Skoll World Forum

OUR SKILLS:

User ResearchInformation ArchitectureUser ExperienceUser InterfaceRuby on RailsDjango

About Exygy

Have a project in mind? Contact us for a free quote.

Exygy415-992-7251

hello@exygy.com

PHPWordPressiOS and AndroidJavascriptMobile Web and ResponsiveMuch more

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Introduction:About This Guide

Whether your company is undergoing a complete rebranding or you’re simply updating your website to keep up with design and technology trends, a website relaunch is one of the most critical undertakings your business will face. There are dozens of factors that will determine how successful your website relaunch is, and how well your business is served by your new site moving forward.

The team at Exygy launches several websites every month (often several websites a week!) This experience has given us a sixth sense for knowing just what it takes to flawlessly launch a website that makes a positive impact on your organization from the very start.

Even though we’ve launched and relaunched hundreds of websites, we understand that things still can, and often do, go wrong. Three of our team members, Zach Berke, Justin Carboneau and David Wells have collaborated on this eBook full of tips, guidelines and ideas to help you relaunch your website smoothly and successfully. We hope that you find it helpful, but if you have questions (and you will have questions) please feel free to email us or give us a call at (415) 992-7251.

Best Regards,

Zach BerkeJustin CarboneauDavid WellsThe Exygy Team

NEXT: Step #1

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Step #1:

How Much Should I Budget for My New Website?

A substantial portion of deciding which strategy to use to relaunch your site will depend on your budget. There are many different ways to build a new site, but below we review what to expect at each budget level.

Next-to-free ($0-1k)If you’ve got essentially no budget, you should consider a SaaS (AKA, Do It Yourself) solution like SquareSpace or WordPress.com. You should expect mediocre results, but you’ll only be paying a low monthly fee for these services.

Uber-Cheap (less than $10k)If you’ve got a little bit larger budget, but not much, your best bet is to go with a templated solution. Find a WordPress template on a site like ThemeForest, and hire a freelancer to install and customize it for you. The results will be a little more impressive than what you’ll get on a SaaS system, but don’t expect to impress anyone with your website.

Small Budget ($10k-25k)In this range, you can afford to hire a cheap designer to design the site, and a cheap developer to build it. Or, if you prefer one-stop shopping, many two-man agencies exist to serve this marketing. Be sure to take the time to approve the designs before you move into build. Approving every detail may slow down the process a bit, but should allow you to get a site that goes a bit beyond mediocrity.

PLANNING YOUR WEBSITE RELAUNCH

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Small Business Budget ($25k-50k)Now you’re getting into small digital agency territory. A quality small agency will be able to produce good results for you. You may not blow anyone away with your site, but it will have the professional look and feel you need to be competitive.

Pro Budget ($50k-100k)Now we’re talking. Let’s go through a design + build process and build you a beautiful new site that blows your competition away.

Enterprise Budget ($100k+)Custom functionality? Lots of Integrations? No problem. If you’ve got $100k+ you’ll to be able to design and build something on the cutting edge. Contact Exygy today to learn more about how we can make your custom site a reality.

How Do I Choose a Developer, a Designer and/or an Agency?

This section focuses on WordPress, because we believe it’s the best CMS available today. However, the advice below applies no matter what CMS you choose to go with.

Finding a reputable WordPress developer can be tricky.

Because WordPress development is so easy to get into, there is no shortage of individuals touting themselves as master WordPress developers, but few have the abilities necessary to back up their claims.

Below are some questions that will help you vet whether your developer-to-be is really an expert developer:

1. How long have they been using WordPress?

The amount of time it takes to become an expert may vary, but you want to get someone who has enough experience to know their way around WordPress and use core WordPress functionality to bake in customizations. A lack of experience with customizations could mean your site will be incompatible with future versions of WordPress, making it much more costly to manage down the road.

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2. Is it better to have custom post types inside of theme files or inside of plugin files?

The correct answer here is: Custom post types should live inside plugin files.

This may seem counter intuitive but it’s very important that this is the way your site is setup. Your WordPress theme is very likely to change over the years. Let’s say you have a client portfolio post type you are using to showcase your past work and this functionality is tied to your theme, your portfolio will disappear once your new theme is installed. This is bad news.

An expert developer will understand this; An amatuer will not.

3. Do they program with WP_DEBUG turned on?

While nearly every guide to WordPress recommends programing with WP_DEBUG turned on, there are many inexperienced developers out there who don’t realize just how important this tool really is. WP_DEBUG produces and records error messages and warnings from your PHP installation. Having these errors recorded allows the web developer to go back and make repairs, while also making the site more secure.

Simply put, not using WP_DEBUG puts the functionality of your website at risk and leaves the door open for security issues down the road. An expert developer will not only understand the importance of this tool, but also be able to easily clear up whatever errors are reported.

4. Do they build themes from scratch or alter existing themes?

There is no right or wrong answer here, but typically if you have the budget to have a theme developed from scratch, that’s the best way to go. Building from scratch will ensure that you have a cleaner code base without too much extraneous code.

5. Do they use version control and/or github?

This answer is super important. If the developer or agency isn’t currently using version control to make sure there are valid restore points along the development process, it could be bad news bears.

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An experience developer will be able to roll back the site to any given point in time and make sure that redundancies are in place in case something breaks.

6. Can they point you to other websites they have created?

Do they have a body of work for you to look at? If not, it’s a huge red flag. If they can’t show you work that they’ve done in the past that is as-good-or-better than what you expect for your project, just walk away. It’s silly to expect that your site will be above and beyond any of the work they have already done. Work with a developer who has already proven that they can produce high-quality results.

7. Can they explain their site development process?

Try and understand how they get the results they do. Is it predictable and process driven, or ad-hoc? Try and understand how much involvement they’ll expect from you, and at what stages in the project.

8. Can they provide client references?

Without past references, how do you know what they can deliver? Be sure to get multiple references. Everyone has an uncle who loves the site their nephew built for them, but that insight doesn’t do much for your site.

NEXT: Step #2

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Which CMS is Right for My Site?

There are lots of good content management systems out there, leaving you with many choices to consider when deciding on a CMS for your site. At Exygy, we’re WordPress experts operating from the mindset “why wouldn’t this be a WordPress project” -- and there are lots of good answers to that question (eg, if you’re building something more complex than a straightforward publishing platform). Popular non-WordPress CMS platforms to consider include Drupal, Joomla, Expression Engine. There are also massive beasts like Adobe CQ.

Why WordPress?

1) It’s Established and Trusted

WordPress runs about 22% of all sites on the web, making it the most popular content management system in the world. WordPress offers 10+ years of continuous development and incremental improvements in each new WordPress version release. It’s a trusted solution for all types of businesses.

2) It’s Easy to Use

If you can write a Word doc, you can create and manage your website with WordPress.

Step #2:

KICKING OFF YOUR WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

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The visual editor makes it easy for anyone to edit and update site content.

3) It’s Cost Effective

After your initial website build, other than web hosting (around 30-100$ a month for a low traffic site), there are not really any costs associated with running a WordPress site. You may need support from time to time, but for the most part maintaining your website will be very budget friendly.

4) It’s Extendable

There are millions of (often free) plugins out there that make extending your site as easy as installing a new program on your laptop.

5. It’s Open Source

WordPress is 100% open source and protected by the GNU GPL license. This means you can use the software for free, forever.

6. The WordPress Community

There is an extremely large community of developers contributing to WordPress core (the underlying software) and additional functionality via plugins on a daily basis.

You will never have trouble finding support for your WordPress site. We host a WordPress Meetup in San Francisco, and we often have 100+ WordPress experts in show up to discuss the newest developments. And that’s just SF -- there are Meetups in Oakland, San Jose, the North Bay, etc. There are hundreds of thousands of WordPress developers and designers out there. With WordPress, you’re never going to be locked into a proprietary system with only one vendor to support you.

7. Your WordPress Site Will Grow With You

As long as you aren’t using a cheap shared hosting provider, WordPress can scale relatively well. It’s very easy to port a site from one hosting provider to another while keeping your content intact.

NEXT: Step #3

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Step #3:

MANAGING YOUR SITE'S CONTENT

Migrating Content From My Old Site

Migrating content from your old site can be a huge task - particularly if your old site is built on a custom CMS (or just a different CMS than the one you're moving to) or has a complex data architecture.

Make sure to discuss this with your developer up front. Learn how your current system is set up, and get them a database dump of your old site as soon as possible. Be sure that your developer has experience with data migrations and has the ability to handle it.

Don’t forget to include site migration in your development budget. If you're moving from an old (and fairly simple) WordPress site to a new WordPress site, the migration should be fairly quick, painless and inexpensive. However, custom migrations can be very time-consuming and need to be budgeted for accordingly.

NEXT: Step #4

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Step #4:

LAUNCHING YOUR NEW SITE

What Do I Need to Do Before Launching My New Site?

Hosting

Where do you want your site to be hosted? This is important to determine very early in the development process, because all web hosts are different. If you're building your site on WordPress, there are lots of WordPress-optimized hosts (such as WP Engine, our preferred host).

What most website owners don’t realize is that some hosts have rules about which plugins you can and can't use, and all hosts have intricacies that can't be replicated in your local development environment. It's best to put the site up where you're planning to host it as soon as possible, to make sure there aren't any issues that might require you to change hosts down the road. It’s better to know what issues you may face early on, well before launch day.

DNS

Who controls the DNS and where is it hosted? You'll want to be sure you have the proper credentials to log in and change the DNS settings. It's a good idea to log in well ahead of time (at least a couple weeks) to make sure you know where you need to go (not all registrars/hosts are intuitive - in fact many are not).

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You'll also want to change the TTL (Time To Live) down to about 300 (5 minutes) at least a couple days before the launch. This is helpful to ensure that when you change the DNS settings, they will propagate quickly.

301 Redirects

301 redirects are extremely important for SEO, so important that failing to set them up during your launch may have significant impact on your site’s traffic and search engine ranking. So what exactly is a 301 redirect? Simply put it is a way to tell search engines that an URL has been permanently changed, and visitors should go to the new URL.

When you are relaunching your site, you need to consider the implications of the URL structure and how search engines view your site. If your old site URL structure is going to change (e.g. example.com/service.html to example.com/service) Google would view those as seperate pages in their index. Without 301 redirects guiding the way, this simple change would mean your pages are incorrectly indexed in Google and users see an error.

Many people assume they only need to redirect the pages they see or frequently visit on their sites, when there are often many other pages that they rarely see that also need to be redirected. Spend a little extra time researching all the pages on your website and ensuring they are redirecting to the best new URL. One of the better ways to do this is to use Google’s Webmaster Tools to see which pages have been indexed in Google and use that as a guide to setup your redirects.

The best way to approach setting up 301 redirects is to make a spreadsheet with the old URLs in one column and the new URLs in another. Once you have this, you can launch your new site and use one of the many redirect plugins in WordPress to ensure you aren’t losing any traffic or ranking. There are also several great tutorials online to ensure you optimize this process.

Test!

Of course you'll want to proofread all of your text and test out any custom functionality before you launch. The more you test beforehand, the fewer urgent calls you'll have to make to your developer at 3am the next morning. Your developer will thank you for testing thoroughly before launch.

NEXT: Step #5

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I’ve Launched My Website. Now What?

How can you ensure your site’s success? At Exygy, we launch several new websites each month, so we’ve compiled a checklist of post-launch to-dos that we do (or recommend) for all our clients.

1. Make It Secure

Website security is a large topic. It could be its own book, or even series of articles. But let’s just cover the basics:

Be sure that ALL passwords are secure ones. That goes for your website logins, FTP accounts, github/bitbucket accounts, hosting accounts and registrar accounts. We use LastPass to store (and share) our passwords securely.If your site is built on WordPress, be sure to keep the WordPress core and your plugins updated regularly. Consider using a dedicated WordPress host such as WP Engine (Exygy’s preferred host) for even tighter security (and great support, too!).

2. Make It Visible

Be sure your site is indexable by search engines. This should be a no-brainer, but I have to admit that there’s been at least one time where I’ve launched a site and then noticed several weeks later that the robots.txt file was disallowing search engines!

Step #5:

POST LAUNCH OPTIMIZATIONS

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If your site is built on WordPress, go to Settings > Reading, and make sure the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” checkbox isn’t checked.

3. Make It SEO-able

What does that mean? It means you should at least be able to easily set the title, meta keywords and meta description for each page and blog post on your site.If you’re using WordPress, there are lots of SEO plugins available. We typically use the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin for our clients.

4. Make It Share-able

There are all kinds of plugins available for social sharing, especially if you’re using WordPress. When it comes to choosing a plugin, see The Definitive Guide to Evaluating a WordPress Plugin.

Which social networks should you add? That’s up to you to decide, based on which networks you’re targeting, what type of site you have, and what your visitor’s prefer. But as always, less is more. Try to limit your site to 3 or 4 carefully chosen “share” buttons.

5. Make It Analyzable

Install Google Analytics or some other analytics platform. This will allow you to track your site’s visits and visitor behavior over time.

If you’re using WordPress, you can easily install one of several Google Analytics plugins, which will add your analytics tracking code to your site easily without you having to modify your code.

6. Make Sure It’s Supported

It’s important to know: • That your site will continue to be supported after launch• Who to call when something breaks

Make sure the company that built your website will either offer you support moving forward,

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or refer you to another company that will.

Knowing who to call:

• If the site goes down, loads slowly, or has any other issues related to loading, it’s best to contact your web host. They can let you know if there’s something wrong with the server, and can usually get you back up and running pretty quickly.

• For any other problems, such as errors, broken images or functionality, misspellings, and things just not working right, contact the company that’s providing your website support.

NEXT: Contact Us

Contact Us

READY TO RELAUNCH YOUR WEBSITE?

Contact us for a free project quote.

Exygy415-992-7251

hello@exygy.com