Sometimes there is an idea that once a gorgeous site is let out into the wild, that the job is done. The owners get to sit back, as the citizens of the web readily flock to their door.
Unfortunately the reality is that no matter how blazingly awesome your site is, it means nothing if people don't know its there. Which is like if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it... well you get the point.

 

This is where the post-launch part of the online game-plan comes in.
Now there are of course online marketing companies and SEO gurus who specialise on this, and we at Rain also partake in post-launch services.

But this is mainly to express that once a site has been launched it is far from over. If there is no plan in place, and it has not been taken seriously, the newly born service will be dead in the water, and you get to use that water to flush your money spent down the drain.

Now there are traditional ways that people will come across the site. So new owners may have all new offline materials for their URL and can announce to current contacts about the new arrival. However it also usually requires more of a jolt to get the people coming by.

Firstly a common expectation is that with the mystical power of SEO, and search engine rankings, visitors will arrive at your site. Yes, it is true that with a good search engine position traffic will reach the site, but in our experience search engine traffic only makes up a percentage of new traffic, and for significant traffic you are wanting to be in the top 5.

High traffic sites though are generally supported by great referring links, from associated sites, and the good news being that having a big site linking into the new site also boosts that sites own search ranking. Therefore when launching a new site, having other sites in place who will support you is very valuable.

I remember a promotion for an event once which I was tracking the analytics for. This event got exposure on the top page of Yahoo! News. I thought that this would be the biggest source of traffic for the event, but in fact it wasn't.
The two biggest sources of traffic came from a seemingly insignificant albeit popular blog site, and advertising on a social network. The spike for the social network site was huge, for a few days, but the blog site maintained a solid stream of visitors, making its overall contribution far outweigh the other methods.

So finding blogs within your site's field/market to write about you is a surprisingly good way to acquire consistent traffic. Also whilst speaking of social networks, social marketing is hugely powerful in bringing people to a website for initial spikes of exposure. Having it mentioned to the right people, by the right people can spread awareness of the site across a huge number of people, who are more likely to check it out.

 

Lastly for this article at least is the production of content on your own site. A simple news or blog section maintained properly is able to provide value to visitors but also allows the site to specifically cover areas of interest that cannot be directly written in the site's main copy.
Fresh information and more specific information can be published and found by search engines as well as spread across social channels.
Keeping the site working away for you, keeps it fresh and growing for others to find and obtain value from, which all has a knock on effect.
 

So whilst this is very general and simply an overview, the point being made is that once a site is launched it is no way the end of the project. The site build is a preparation for getting out there and operating on the web, and getting noticed once you are out there is a serious and indepth matter. Therefore when considering a new website, the post-launch strategy is vital, and there should be a plan and budget ready for it.
Otherwise if we build and expect them to just come, everything that was spent on a gorgeous new site is wasted.