Planning to Get a Website? Here’s What You Should Do in the Meantime

For those of you in the beginning stages of launching a new service-based business, we’ve put together our recommendations of what to have in place before embarking on a website project to ensure your brand’s digital presence is strong from the start! 

1. Purchase your Domain

Realistically, purchasing your domain should be done in tandem with your initial naming research to see what is currently available and the price associated. We don’t recommend paying 4+ figures to secure the perfect domain, but there are general best practices when it comes to selecting your domain:

• Shorter is typically better, unless it feels oddly truncated. armadadig.com is not a better fit than armadadigital.co, for example.
• Users are now used to going to sites other than .com without issue; here are the top 5 alternatives.
• While there is SEO power in opting for something “on the nose”—catchy may be better, it all depends on your audience and industry!
• Please purchase your own domain! Do not have a third party (like an agency) do it for you. GoDaddy, NameCheap, and Network Solutions are all good domain registrars.
• Please put your domain on auto-renew. We most often see websites go down due to lapses in domain registration. 

2. Enter the Market with Established Branding

The level of investment in your visual branding should reflect your business goals. A business just starting out with modest growth goals over the course of several years is going to have different needs than a brand that aims to go nationwide tomorrow or needs to quickly attract investors.

While we don’t need mock-ups showing what your logo looks like applied to billboards or merch, we do want to ensure we’re able to confidently apply the branding to your website. For our process, this includes:

• Finalized logo for the brand and access to the associated logo files
• Color palette with distinction of primary and secondary colors
• Font selection(s) with distinction between headers and body copy

Our Platform to SEO program includes the application of established branding. This can come in the form of an pre-existing website to reference, responses to a questionnaire, or official branding guidelines—the importance is that these elements have been selected after much consideration vs. thrown together on a whim. If you’ve just begun to consider the visual brand for your business, we have a number of partners we can refer you to that will help bring your vision to life!

3. Invest in Quality Photography

For service-based businesses, your product is tightly wrapped up in your team. The quicker you’re able to build authority and trust with your audience, the better. While this can be partially accomplished through a well-functioning website and compelling website copy, things like cheesy stock imagery or blurry, low-quality team photos can have a damaging effect. 

We suggest working with a local photographer to capture a handful of portrait and landscape images for use across your website and social media platforms. This is especially important if the delivery of your service involves going into residential homes. Users want to see friendly faces and trust the installation or delivery team won’t be showing up in an unmarked van. 

If you’d like to take it to the next level, consider having the photographer capture a number of project photos that showcase your work, especially if you’re providing a service that’s design or aesthetic related. These images can also be used on your Google Business Profile and social media platforms in addition to a “portfolio” or “gallery” page on the website where users can immediately see the quality of your work.

4. Set Up Your Google Business Profile

Now that you have your branding established and high-quality photos ready to go, we recommend setting up your Google Business Profile. While your performance on Google will greatly benefit from having an official website, it’s not required to start your profile. 

You can build out your profile as little or as much as you like—there is always the chance that prospects will stumble on it depending on how niche or competitive your offering is. We recommend having it in place as early as possible so that you can capture testimonials from satisfied customers as soon as possible.

Google makes it easy to send out a direct link or create a QR code that drives users to leave a review, which takes us to recommendation #5! 

5. Gather Customer/Client Testimonials ASAP

When launching your website, our goal is to immediately position your brand as THE obvious choice. We accomplish this by launching a website that is visually cohesive, with copy that is optimized for search engines and gets to the heart of your audience’s challenges, but for some users—the real research begins in the reviews.

We build for the future, so whether 5-star reviews are ready to flow in immediately, or the section needs to be hidden until that internal process is implemented and feedback starts to roll in, we consider the functionality to be a necessity.

6. Gather Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) ASAP

Save yourself the back and forth and take note of the questions that are repeatedly asked in the sales process. This type of section is meant to be updated and built up over time, but launching with key FAQs helps position your brand as an authority on the topic and reiterates that this (that is, providing whatever service you provide) isn’t your first rodeo. 

If you’d like to take it one step further, you can expand on these common questions to then create a full blog post on the topic so can then be used as a resource during the sales process. In fact, you’re reading one!

7. Finalize Your Lead Generation Strategy

While search engine optimization is included in all of the websites that we build, we approach SEO as a long-term lead generation strategy as it takes times to climb the rankings and establish a first-page foothold. This is why our Ongoing Digital Marketing campaigns often include both our Ongoing SEO and Google PPC Advertising services. The former is meant to identify additional keywords to build long-form content around—location-specific pages, blog posts, and case studies are all common examples—while the latter is an opportunity to pay to rank for high-intent keywords now.

Our strategy then includes pulling back on ad spend for select keywords as new rankings take hold and drive organic traffic and conversions as a result. This requires a close watch on website and ad performance and is something our team deeply enjoys doing. We like to clarify upfront that launching a new website will not drive business in and of itself, so our Platform to Digital Marketing program is designed to take the baton and run! 

While all of the above can seem like a lot to put into practice, we’re happy to walk you through the steps and/or introduce you to our trusted partners. You can schedule a free exploratory call with our team here.