Top 10 Things to do After Launching an E-Commerce Website
After launching your website, there are some things that you have to do to make it competitive, be searched online, and your visitors will learn about your website. It's not only for SEO purposes but making your website user friendly.
Create a xml sitemap
This is the first thing you should do because it will help your site get indexed by search engines. You can choose to link the sitemap directly to your website or use sitemap creation tools like Google Webmaster tools that will help her create a free sitemap for you.
Sign up with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a perfect tool for small businesses, e-commerce or not. It is a completely free tool enough for most websites. All you need to do is sign up for a Gmail account and you'll have access to Google Analytics.
Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Central
Once you signed up for a Google Analytics account, Google Webmaster tools is only a click away. Google Webmaster tools has a lot of useful tools to setup your website, track backlinks, fix load errors, fix html errors, analyze important keywords, and many more.
You might also want to sign up for Bing Webmaster Central, Microsoft's version of Google Webmaster tools.
Setup Google Alerts
Google Alerts gets you alerted as soon as the terms you want notified are included in any web pages. This is a great tool to monitor mentions and in monitoring one of your most important keywords.
Submit your website to free niche directories
Every new site (e-commerce site or blog) should submit their website to free niche directories upon launch. DMOZ is one of the best free links you can receive. However, due to a large number of entries, it may take a while before your site can be included. Just be patient especially if you are a high quality site. But if you manage a micro-site or an affiliate site, expect that your site will get rejected. Try your luck somewhere else.
Submit a press release
Sending out a press release is another must. This will provide a simple introduction to your company so users will know you better. What is it that you sell? What makes your product unique? What type of company are you? These are just a few of the questions needed in a press release.
Press release is a bit expensive but there are popular PR sites that can distribute your press release for free.
Start a blog
Blogging is a great way to establish your authority in your industry, build an audience, create a network and build quality backlinks. You can start a free blog from popular blogging platforms like Tumblr, Blogger, and WordPress but you'll have full control over your posts if you host the blog yourself.
Create a social media account
Not every business needs a social media account but an e-commerce site requires one. Create social media accounts on the three popular social media: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You might also want to create a social media account on YouTube if you have videos to share, Scribd for sharing documents, and in Flickr for sharing videos.
Create a social bookmarking account
Social bookmarking is an easy way to gain traffic and backlinks. While it is not as authoritative as other sources, it is a great way to get your website indexed faster. It is a wonderful starting point for every e-commerce site. Reddit, Digg, Folkd, Slashdot, and StumbleUpon are some great social bookmarking sites.
Inform your contacts about your new site
This is another important aspect when launching your new e-commerce website but most people simply forgets how to take advantage of your existing database and spread the word out of your new business. Use social media, start your email marketing campaign, or even make a phone call.