One of the most common questions we receive is: If I hire With Grace and Gold to create my brand and web design, how should I move forward and use my new brand and web design well? Will my Search Engine Optimization be enhanced? Will my audience find me? Can I simply focus on my clients and my customers?

At With Grace and Gold, we think of your brand and web design as the visual foundation from which your business can grow — a place where your audience can form a connection with you, learn about your products and services with ease, and be led toward confidently choosing to purchase your products and book your services.

But… is simply having a professional web design enough? Once you’ve launched your new web design, can you go back to focusing on your clients and customers — and let your website work for you? In this week’s episode — Beyond Your Brand: Now What? — we’re sharing what to do after your new website has launched.

Beyond Your Brand: Now What?

Welcome to Episode 112 of the Brand It, Build It Podcast! Whether you’re considering hiring a professional designer for your web design, you’re in the middle of your web design process, or you’ve recently launched your new web design — knowing what your website can do, and what your website can’t do can be truly valuable.

I want to begin by saying, there is so much your website can do. Often, your website is how your prospective clients gather more information about your business — so having a well-designed website can make all the difference. A well-designed website can communicate your expertise, or the quality of your work. It can use language, copywriting, and layout to form personal, meaningful, and lasting connections with your visitors. Your website can be designed with purpose — so your visitors are seamlessly led toward confidently choosing your business, even when comparing one business to another. 

In so many ways, your website lays a foundation for your future business growth and success. When designed well, your website can grow with your business — especially as your approach, style, or offerings evolve in the years ahead. 

So, what should you do when your web design process is done, and your new website has launched? Today, I’ll walk through 5 recommendations I often share with our clients at With Grace and Gold — 5 ways you can use your newly-launched website to keep momentum and better ensure your website will truly work on your behalf… That means a growing number a visitors, meaningful and memorable connections with prospective clients, and better conversions overall. After all, behind every web design is a desire to grow your business — to kindly, honestly, and openly equip your visitors to become confidently-paying clients. 

So, let’s dive in:

1. First, while your new web design will likely enhance your Search Engine Optimization, enhanced SEO requires more than a web design. While I can’t speak on behalf of all design businesses, at With Grace and Gold, Search Engine Optimization is included within our web design process. We offer a foundation of Search Engine Optimization, from labeling photos and design elements and optimizing copywriting, to applying SEO Titles and SEO Descriptions to each page of your web design. But strong SEO is made up of a variety of factors, and how those factors work together. These factors range from having compelling and helpful content within your website and offering share-worthy content to be promoted via social media, to having your website listed and shared about on other reputable websites, such as trustworthy, dependable business directories or blogs. While much can be done within your website, it’s important to know what else can be done, beyond your website, to help enhance your Search Engine Optimization. For a complete and well-rounded look at Search Engine Optimization, please listen to Episodes 72, 73, and 74 — our Small Business Owner’s Guide to SEO series. These episodes share how to enhance your SEO both within and beyond your web design.
2. Next, we recommend making quarterly updates to your website’s photos and galleries. By scheduling quarterly updates to your photos and galleries, you can ensure your website’s visitors are seeing your most recent work. Many clients we serve at With Grace and Gold express that their most recent work is often their best work — work they’d like to be able to share with their visitors and showcase to their audience. Along these same lines…
3. Next, if your web design has been professionally-designed, we don’t recommend straying too far from your completed web design. At With Grace and Gold, while we equip and empower our clients to confidently use, update, and maintain their completed web designs, for the best results, we recommend updating only photos, galleries, and copywriting — rather than changing or rearranging design elements or design features. Over time, small web design changes can add up and cause a web design to look less cohesive or less elevated overall. As you move forward with a newly-launched web design, we recommend focusing solely on photography, gallery, and copywriting updates.
4. Next, and perhaps most importantly, we recommend continued blogging and social media marketing. Many small business owners we have served have shared how overwhelming blogging can feel. Just like we share in Episode 3, blogging can be a truly meaningful and helpful feature of your online presence as a whole. Blog posts can equip you to speak to and connect with your audience, to showcase recent work perhaps not showcased in your Portfolio, to demonstrate your expertise or provide helpful resources for visitors, and to enhance your Search Engine Optimization. When we’re brainstorming blog content of our own, we often think about frequently asked questions we receive. Then, we compose a single blog post, or record a single podcast episode, about each frequently asked question — creating weeks of purpose-driven, helpful, and audience-focused content. What questions do you receive? What is your audience seeking inspiration about? What recent work can you showcase? How can you demonstrate your expertise? While the core pages of your website like Home, About, Services, Portfolio, and Contact serve as a great base for your website, your blog posts truly serve as the arms of your website — helping your website to have more reach overall. In addition, continued social media marketing can make a big difference when it comes to your website’s success. Social media is a great place to share your recent work, your recent blog posts, or links to key areas of your website. Depending upon which social media platform or platforms you choose to use, your posts can be saved, shared, or passed along. As shared earlier, strong Search Engine Optimization is dependent upon a variety of factors — and one of those factors is website traffic, or the number of quality visits your website receives. With consistent social media marketing, you are likely to increase your website traffic and better connect with audience members who are interested in learning more about your business through the links you share. For all of these reasons and more, continued blogging and social media marketing are often our top recommendations for successfully moving forward with your new web design.
5. Lastly, community is essential. Partnering and collaborating with fellow business owners can expose you to new audiences. At With Grace and Gold, we ask our custom brand and web design clients and our Showit website template customers to tag us on social media when they launch their new web design. That way, we can share their posts with our audience and expose their business to a new audience, too. Partnerships and collaborations can be helpful ways to boost brand awareness — especially when you are mindful of who your audience is. In other words, we don’t recommend partnering simply for the sake of partnering — but partnering to be seen by prospective clients who will connect with, value, and appreciate all your business has to offer. 

Summed up, today, I shared 5 ways you can use your newly-launched website to keep momentum and better ensure your website will truly work on your behalf:

1. Know that Search Engine Optimization requires more than a professional web design, and consider the ways you can enhance your SEO beyond your website by listening to Episodes 72, 73, and 74.
2. Schedule quarterly updates to your website’s photos and galleries, so your visitors can see your most recent work, and so you can confidently showcase your best work.
3. Don’t stray too far from your completed, professionally-created web design. Little by little, small changes can add up and cause a design to appear less polished, so staying within your designer’s guidelines can be advantageous. 
4. Continued blogging and marketing your business on social media — and beyond. One part of enhancing your Search Engine Optimization is bringing high-quality visitors to your website, so continuing to compose and share blog posts, and continuing to market your business on social media can make all the difference. For recommendations about blogging, please tune into Episode 3, and for recommendations about social media marketing, please tune into Episode 111 where we share 10 ways to share one piece of content.
5. Lastly, community is essential. Partnering and collaborating with fellow business owners can expose you to new audience and foster community overall.

We are so hopeful today’s episode equips you for success following the launch of your next or newest web design.

About Brand It, Build It Podcast, Hosted by Kelly Zugay

Hosted by Kelly Zugay, co-founder of With Grace and Gold, The Brand It, Build It Podcast is a leading small business marketing podcast for small business owners, creatives, founders and entrepreneurs. Enjoy weekly, actionable episodes to build a successful, sustainable small business from the inside out.