Announcing Your New Website

It’s a good idea to wait at least a couple of days after launch to do your official announcements. This gives you time to find any bugs or issues that need resolving before you widely promote your website launch. Check with your development team to be sure about the timing.

1. Publish a blog post
This post can contain a video going over new features, screenshots of special pages, the rationale behind your redesign or launch, and testimonials from excited customers or members that relate to the new site.

2. Send an email to current customers, prospects and members
Customers, members and those who have taken the time to join your email list should be notified first. Members should be especially interested in a new membership website that offers more features, perks and increases member value.

3. Ask all staff/key volunteers to change their email signature
You can provide sample text for them to use. Something along the lines of “Check out our new website,” with a link is appropriate. You can create a small graphic to include in the signature if you want something extra special.

4. Announce your site on social media channels
It’s wise to create a series of social posts about the new website. These can be spread out over a couple of weeks or even a month. Be sure to create fun graphics. Facebook posts with images are 2.3x more likely to get clicked on versus those without images. Some ideas:

• Create screenshots of new pages on your website.
• Do a “Top 5” or “Top 10” list mentioning the top things site visitors can do or explore when they visit the new site.
• Use photos of people or animals (if that would align with your brand) expressing excitement.
• Try holding a contest in conjunction with your announcement; consider these creative ideas. Remember to check the contest rules for each platform you are posting on.

Use Canva, Photoshop or tools within the social media platforms to add text on top of the images. Check to be sure that your text is not too small to be readable when the image is viewed on a smart phone as that’s the most likely platform for social media to be viewed.

5. Send an email to past customers or members
Perhaps some people stopped visiting your site due to a lack of a mobile responsive design or the fact that it didn’t have features that met all of their needs. A new website announcement email is a great opportunity to let folks know how you can better serve them now. And it’s much easier and cheaper to bring past customers back into the fold than it is to advertise to attract a new customer.

6. Create a new website announcement video
A website announcement video can incorporate different messages depending upon your target audience and what you are trying to communicate. It’s a good idea to keep it to 2 to 3 minutes or less. It can be even shorter as 33% of viewers click away and move on after the first 30 seconds of a web video. Some ideas for announcement video content:

• A narrated walk-through of your website. This is effective if you have a number of new features to show off. Consider doing this as a Facebook Live or Instagram Live video for maximum social media impact.
• Member or customer testimonials talking about things they can do on your new website.
• An interview where a key person involved with the website design or a board member talks about what their goals were related to the new website.

Places you can post your announcement video:

• On your YouTube channel if you have one,
• On your website itself,
• On social media,
• In a blog post on your site, and
• In your announcement email (platforms like MailChimp will allow you to put in a YouTube video link so users with some email clients like Gmail can play the video within their email inbox).

1. Boost your email list from internal sources
Email is superior to social media for announcing a new website to loyal customers. You’ve probably noticed that you don’t get notified every time your favorite brands post on Facebook. Facebook controls how many of a page’s followers will see posts. After all, they’d prefer that you pay them to boost that post. On average, a Facebook post will reach 8.1% of those who like the page. On the other hand, emails reach about 85% of the people they are sent to. Hopefully you have been collecting customer and member email addresses as you’ve been fulfilling orders, taking event registrations or otherwise interacting online. You may have a variety of different places customer email addresses are stored such as:

• An ecommerce platform,
• Online form submission entries (like a contact form) and
• A CRM or membership software.

Assuming you have permission to add these people to your email marketing list, it’s time to upload any additional email addresses. While you’re at it, you might look into what integrations your various platforms have to see if they can automatically add emails to your email marketing system in the future. You don’t want to have to undertake this process again. Add a checkbox to any ecommerce checkouts and other forms to allow customers to opt-in to your list so you are certain of their intent to subscribe.

2. Add an email subscription popup to your current website
You can add a popup form by adding in an email opt-in plugin or widget provided by your email marketing provider or another plugin. Make sure that these signups are feeding data over to your email marketing platform. The average conversion rate for all pop-ups is 3.09%, but there are ways to increase that number. Popups that include an offer such as a discount are more successful at converting than those that don’t. Depending upon the success of the popup, you may opt to continue to use a popup on your new site.

3. Hold a drawing to collect email addresses
If you see a big discrepancy in numbers between the number of social followers versus the number of subscribers to your email list, consider holding a contest on social media to build up your email list. Or consider other creative list-building promotions. Create posts and stories to tell those that complete your email signup form on your website between now and an upcoming date will automatically be entered to win something special. Perhaps it’s a free product, a free 1 year membership, a set of tickets to an upcoming event or something else you know would be attractive to your target audience. Note that there are rules regarding holding contests or promotions; they should be followed carefully.

• See Instagram contest rules. And these helpful tips.
• See Facebook promotion rules. And this guide.

• They are among the select, special few who know about the launch at this point.
• You would appreciate any feedback they have, including bugs they spot by a specified date (ideally before you make the major announcement so you have time to address issues they might raise).
• You have an online form where they can submit their website feedback. This will help your web designer or developer find all issues items in one place. Be sure to include a field for collecting the URL of any pages that may have issues. A Google form works great for this task as you don’t necessarily want the form to appear on your website.

Sample new website announcement email

Hello [nam]!

We are thrilled to announce that your organization name has launched a new website at website url <make a link>. Some of the great new features of this site include (list only those that apply to your organization):

• A searchable membership directory <make this a link to your directory>
• Online event calendar <make this a link to your calendar/events page> with online payments
• Ability to edit your directory profile <make this a link to your member login page> and pay membership dues online.
• And more! (if there are other new features that are a part of your site like forms, a shopping cart, etc., add them on!)

If you’d like to edit your directory <make this a directory link> profile, renew your membership or otherwise manage your account with us, please:

1. Go to the member sign in & manage account page at <make this a link>
2. Click on the Request Password option
3. Enter your email address.
4. Hit the Request Password button.
5. Check your email for the password message and follow the instructions in that email. If you don’t see the message, check your spam folder.

If you run into trouble or have questions, contact <enter contact name of person and email address>.

Please let us know feedback or concerns to ensure we continue to serve you well.

Thank you,

Your Name
Organization
Email/Phone
Website URL

It’s important for existing members to be able to log in to edit their profile and make renewal payments. Here are the instructions to tell them how to do just that:

1. Go to member manage/manage account page <make this a link>
2. Click on the Request Password option
3. Enter your email address
4. Hit the Request Password button
5. Check your email for the password message and follow the instructions in that email. If you don’t see the message, check your spam folder.

Members can edit their password once they log in. Note that by default, new members who sign up online will receive their password in their welcome email. If you want to edit or customize the default welcome email, go to Labels & Membership. You’ll find the welcome email at the top of each membership level’s Actions tab.