conducting quality assurance
Before your website goes live, conduct a quality assurance test. Use your mission statement as a guide and prepare a list of quality assurance markets to rigorously test your website and ensure that it meets high standards in all areas.
Your website quality assurance list may include the following:
- Content – check for any critical errors in your content delivery. Make sure that all the right information is present.
- Design – check for technical issues or bugs. Make sure all features and functions are working.
- Technical performance – check how your website performs in different browsers and at different screen resolutions.
- Feedback – make sure there is a system in place to gain visitor feedback or for visitors to report any bugs in the design.
marketing your web venture
…You should already know a great deal about your target market from the initial research you did when writing your business plan. Your visitors and potential customers are at the very centre of your online business.
Creating a Marketing Strategy
To establish a successful website – one that will survive and grow in cyberspace – it’s important to have a marketing strategy in place to enable you to promote and advertise your web venture to reach your target audience.
One of the first things you should do in preparation for promoting your website venture is to produce a media kit. This will give a journalist all the information they need to write or report a story. Media or press kits can be produced in a PDF file for instant download from your website or a print version can also be made available for offline use.
A cover page featuring your brand identity with your website contact details.
General background information about your website and details of products/ services offered.
Previous press releases featuring stories relating to your website. A list of testimonials or customer endorsements.
Preparing a media campaign
In addition to advertising on and offline, there may be times when you need to use the media to gain some free publicity for your website.
The key to running a successful media campaign is making sure that you have a story that is newsworthy. A good story gains an audience, whether it is for newspapers, magazines or broadcast stations, so it is imperative that you find an ‘angle’ for your product or service and communicate it in the right way.
Ahead of your launch prepare your first press release that will grab the media’s attention. The purpose of this press release is to announce the launch of your website. It should give information about what the website is about and who it’s aimed at.
However, this information alone isn’t enough. To reiterate, the media are more interested in the story behind the website – why it was created, by whom and any significant angle that will turn your story from an advert into a genuinely interesting article for the news pages.
