Redesigning a website - How to market the launch of a new website

Read Part 1: How to craft a new digital brand

Sharing with the world

The announcement of a new website is a special one, and should not be just thrown out there to the world.  Not only is this a celebration of all the work your team has done, but it is also a chance to ask for feedback on the site, reach new audiences, and reconnect with your current audiences.

Since we had also gone through a rebrand of our logo, we developed consistent graphics to use with the announcement.  This went on posters, the headers of our social media sites, social media graphics for website announcement posts, direct email campaigns, individual team members email signatures, etc.

We developed a tiered approach to announcing the site that went along these lines:

• Week 1: Share with close friends and colleagues (think less than 20 people total).  This feedback was taken very seriously and shared with the entire team and web developer.  A lot of it was spot on.  Some of it were items we wish we’d thought of during the design phase.  Some of it we discarded as it wasn’t “onbrand”.
• Week 2: Share with internal colleagues and partners.  For us this meant the Tuck community: students, staff, and faculty.  Our Faculty Director crafted an email that went out to the community introducing the new site, and giving a little background information on the changes.
• Week 3: Share with external audiences.  We’d made some last minute updates and it was time to let the whole world know about the site!  It was an exciting day as we put it out through direct email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+.
• Week 4: Start of ongoing marketing efforts to the new site.

Our ongoing marketing efforts involved identifying some core webpages to highlight and planning when to share with external audiences.  These promotions were around our MBA Programs offering, a signature speaker series, etc.  We planned a couple of contests and giveaways within the Tuck community and on our social channels.

Looking forward

At this point, the team has made an enormous investment in the site, and not just financially.  We’ve logged countless hours, considered a great amount of constructive feedback, and started to plan future content.  While v2017 is up and running, this is not the end of the story.

One of the biggest impacts v2017 has had is instilling a sense of pride in the CDS team.  Because everyone was involved in the review, design, content scrubbing, marketing, and release, everyone has a sense of ownership in the site.  As a result, the team is much more proactive about making updates to the site (this is helped by the fact that WordPress is a great system to use and user friendly).

The team is excited about producing more content to display on the site-and it’s contagious.  We’ve had more partners, executives, and faculty show an interest in contributing case studies, blogs, etc. to our site since v2017 launched.  When someone tells us they were looking at the site, instead of cringing at what might have gone wrong, there’s a sense of excitement as to what they discovered.

The website will evolve.  There will be new ways we can use it that we haven’t realized yet (we’re still plugging through that structure mindset shift)!  New partners and content will become involved, users will ask for new functionality, hardware and software will change.  After going through this redesign I am confident that this team of talented individuals is all the more ready for those challenges-we’re looking forward to what comes next.

Website v2017 "Pack"

Alva Taylor | Faculty Director, Associate Professor of Business Administration
Hans Brechbühl | Executive Director, Adjunct Associate Professor of Business Administration
Patrick Wheeler | Program Manager
Ross Dutille | Program Coordinator
Sonia Faciszewski | Marketing and Communication Manager
Team of Awesome Interns: Oliver Engelhart, Chuxi Zhang, Anup Chamrajnagar
Adam Kline & Kline Interactive Team | Web Developer

Read the entire blog as originally published on the Center for Digital Strategies website.