Launch day feels like the finish line. Months of planning, designing, writing and reviewing, and finally your new website is live. Time to celebrate and move on.
Except it isn't really the finish line. It's the start. A website isn't a brochure you print once and forget about. It's closer to a shop, or a car: it needs looking after, it needs occasional improvements, and it works best when someone's paying attention to it.
That's not meant to sound daunting. Most of the ongoing work is small and routine. But it's worth knowing what's involved, so you can plan for it rather than discovering it the hard way when something breaks. Here's what happens after a website launches, and what you need to think about.
The first few weeks: settling in
Even with thorough testing, a brand-new website will usually turn up a few small issues once real people start using it. A typo someone spots, a link pointing to the wrong page, a form that needs a tweak, a layout that looks slightly off on one particular device.
This is completely normal. That's why most agencies include a post-launch support period, often somewhere between two and four weeks, to fix anything that crops up. [Two Pixels team: add your own post-launch support period here.]
During this period, it's also important to check a few things:
Redirects are working. If you've replaced an older website, every old page address should redirect to the most relevant new page. This protects your search rankings and stops people who bookmarked old pages from hitting a "page not found" error.
Search engines have found the new site. Your sitemap should be submitted to Google Search Console, which also tells you if Google's having trouble crawling or indexing any pages.
Analytics are tracking properly. Check that visits are being recorded, and that enquiries, bookings or purchases are tracked as conversions.
Forms are delivering. Submit every form yourself and make sure messages arrive in the right inbox.
It's also normal to see some movement in your search rankings for a few weeks after launching a new site, as Google re-crawls and re-evaluates your pages. With proper redirects in place, things should settle down.
Hosting: keeping the lights on
Your website lives on a server somewhere, and that costs money. Depending on your platform, hosting might be included in a platform subscription, such as a Webflow or Squarespace site plan, or it might be a separate hosting account, as with most WordPress sites.
Either way, it's worth knowing:
- Who pays for hosting, and when it renews
- Whose name the account is in (ideally yours)
- What happens if the site goes down, and who's responsible for fixing it
Letting hosting lapse because a renewal email went to someone who's left the company is more common than you'd think, and it takes your whole site offline.
Your domain name: don't let it expire
Your domain name, the yourbusiness.co.uk part, is registered for a set period, usually one or more years, and needs renewing. If it expires, your website and possibly your email stop working, and in the worst case someone else can register it.
Make sure your domain is registered in your business's name, auto-renewal is switched on, and the payment card on file is current. It takes five minutes and can save a lot of pain.
Updates and security
This varies a lot depending on the platform your site is built on.
Hosted platforms such as Webflow, Squarespace, Wix and Shopify handle core updates and security for you. The platform itself is maintained by its provider, so there are no software updates for you to manage. You'll still want to keep your own logins secure, use strong passwords and two-factor authentication, and keep any third-party integrations up to date.
Self-hosted WordPress needs more active care. WordPress itself, your theme and all your plugins release updates regularly, often to fix security vulnerabilities. Outdated plugins are one of the most common ways websites get hacked. Updates also occasionally break things, so ideally they should be tested rather than applied blindly. A WordPress site needs someone responsible for this on a regular basis, whether that's you, a staff member or a maintenance plan.
Backups
Things occasionally go wrong: a mistaken edit, a failed update, a hacked site, a hosting problem. A recent backup is the difference between a five-minute fix and a very bad week.
Check that your site is backed up automatically, how often, how long backups are kept, and, crucially, that someone knows how to restore one. Most hosted platforms include some form of backup or version history. For WordPress, it depends on your host and setup.
Keeping your content fresh
This is the part that makes the biggest difference to whether your website keeps performing, and it's the part most businesses let slip.
A website that's never updated gradually becomes less accurate, less useful and less visible. Prices change, services evolve, staff come and go, and the site no longer reflects the business.
Fresh, relevant content also helps with search. Regularly adding helpful articles, case studies and project write-ups gives Google more reasons to show your site, and gives visitors more reasons to trust you.
Some habits we'd recommend:
- Monthly: check key information like prices, opening hours, team members and offers is still correct
- Monthly or quarterly: add a new blog post, case study or project write-up
- Quarterly: review your main service pages and update anything that's changed
- Annually: take a step back and ask whether the site still reflects where your business is going
If your site is built with an easy-to-use content management system, most of this can be done yourself in minutes.
Watching the numbers
Once your site's been live for a month or two, you'll have enough data to start learning from it. You don't need to become an analytics expert, but a quick monthly look at a handful of numbers tells you a lot:
- Visitors: is traffic growing over time?
- Sources: where are people coming from? Google, social media, referrals, direct?
- Top pages: which pages get the most attention?
- Conversions: how many enquiries, bookings or sales is the site generating?
- Search Console: which searches are you appearing for, and which are bringing clicks?
Over time, patterns emerge. Maybe one service page gets lots of visits but few enquiries, which suggests it needs a clearer call to action. Maybe a particular blog post brings in a surprising amount of traffic, which suggests writing more on that topic.
Continuous improvement
The best websites aren't launched and left; they're improved steadily over time. Rather than a big redesign every five years, small, regular improvements based on real data keep a site performing and extend its life considerably.
This might include:
- Adding new pages for services or locations
- Improving pages that aren't converting
- Testing different headlines or calls to action
- Speeding up pages that have slowed down
- Adding new features as the business grows, like online booking or a newsletter
- Expanding content around the topics that bring in the most traffic
DIY or a care plan?
So who does all this? You've broadly got three options.
Do it yourself. If your site is on a hosted platform and you're comfortable with the editor, you can handle a lot of this in-house. It's the cheapest option, as long as you're honest about whether it'll actually get done.
Ad hoc support. Contact your agency when you need something, and pay for the time. Fine for occasional changes, but nobody's keeping an eye on things proactively.
A monthly care plan or retainer. You pay a monthly fee for your agency to handle maintenance, monitoring, backups and a set amount of changes or improvements. It's the most hands-off option, and usually works out cheaper per hour than ad hoc work.
[Two Pixels team: describe your care plans here, e.g. "Our care plans start from £X a month and include..." with a short summary of each tier.]
There's no single right answer. It depends on your platform, your budget, how often things change in your business, and how much you want to be involved.
A quick post-launch checklist
If you've just launched, or are about to, here's a checklist to run through:
- All old URLs redirect to relevant new pages
- Sitemap submitted to Google Search Console
- Analytics tracking visits and conversions
- Every form tested and delivering to the right inbox
- Google Business Profile updated with the new website link
- Social media profiles updated with the new link
- Domain and hosting in your name, with auto-renewal on
- Backups confirmed
- You (and your team) know how to edit content
- A plan for who handles updates and maintenance
Look after it, and it'll look after you
A website is one of the hardest-working assets your business has. It's open around the clock, answering questions, building trust and bringing in customers. A little regular care keeps it doing that job well for years.
Whether you'd like to manage things yourself with a bit of training, or hand the whole lot over to us, we'll make sure your website keeps working as hard as you do.
[Ask about our website care plans →]