63: The Ultimate Website Launch: How I Threw a Virtual Party & Tripled My Traffic

designbusiness

Oct 10

Ever wished you could make your website launch as exciting for your audience as it is for you? In this week's episode of Think Inside the Square, I'm taking you behind the scenes to tell you how I turned the InsideTheSquare.co website relaunch into a virtual party that had thousands of visitors exploring every corner of my new site.

You'll learn:

How to create buzz with exclusive access
Creative ideas for virtual "party favors"
Tips for managing unexpected success
Ways to gather priceless user feedback

Whether you're planning a launch or just looking for fresh marketing ideas, this episode is packed with strategies you can start using today.

[00:00:00] I have launched hundreds of websites throughout my career as a designer, and none of them were as exciting as the website launch that I just had for InsideTheSquare. co. I turned my website launch into a virtual launch party that skyrocketed my traffic within the first few hours of opening the floodgates.
[00:00:19] It was a smashing success, and in this episode of Think Inside the Square, I'm going to take you behind the scenes to teach you exactly how I did it. Welcome to Think Inside the Square, a podcast full of tips and tricks to help you create a website that you're proud of. I'm your host, Becca Harpy, creator of InsideTheSquare.
[00:00:35] co, and in this episode, I'm going to share with you the details behind my most successful website launch to date. For a transcript of this episode, along with the links to any resources mentioned, you Visit the new InsideTheSquare. co forward slash podcast. I spent about six months redoing the content for my website InsideTheSquare.
[00:00:55] co. It was a lot of hard work, there was a lot of new content that I [00:01:00] created, and I wanted my audience to be just as excited as I was about this launch. So I knew that instead of just saying, Hey, here's my new website, I needed to get creative with this website launch. With an email list of thousands, I really needed to find a way to make this exciting.
[00:01:15] InsideTheSquare. com And I decided to throw a virtual launch party. Here's what went into that party. I knew that I needed to make it exclusive. I knew that I needed to make it a very specific, short period of time. And that I needed to encourage them to explore my new content in a creative way. I did that with party favors.
[00:01:35] Now, in this episode, I'm going to break down all of these aspects for you. Let's start with the very first part, how did I make it exclusive? I decided that you could only access the site through that 48 hour window if you had joined my email list. Now, about two weeks leading up to the party, I've mentioned that on my YouTube channel, I mentioned that on Instagram, all the platforms I'm on regularly, I let everybody know, hey, if you're not on [00:02:00] my email list, you're going to want to be.
[00:02:01] I'm taking my website down for 48 hours, and the only way you'll be able to see inside is if you sign up for my email list. This really signups. But it also made sure that the people on my list felt like the VIPs that they are. I really wanted them to feel special and to be excited about this experience with me, and that was a great first step.
[00:02:22] Now the other crucial part of that was that 48 hour window. It needed to be a very specific set of time and a short period of time to really get the momentum going. So I decided October 1st, aligned with the Tuesday, and that's usually when I release my new tutorials, I email all my list on Tuesday. It just seemed perfect.
[00:02:41] So I said, okay, October 1st to October 3rd. That's the 48 hour window that the exclusive VIPs on my email list will get to explore all of my new content. Now, the third part. Was arguably the most exciting part, and that, my friend, were the party favors. I needed to think of a creative way [00:03:00] to get people to truly explore the site.
[00:03:02] It's one thing to send people a link, they might click on it, they might look around, but if they're hunting for cool little easter eggs tucked in throughout your content, they were much more likely to explore all of the stuff I had worked so hard to create. So I decided to create virtual party favors.
[00:03:19] Now to be clear, these party favors weren't like coupon codes for free shipping, although I don't have physical products, but you know what I mean. They weren't like 20 percent off a specific item or anything like that. These party favors were exclusive to the event and they were individual items that required nothing more than someone filling out a form to claim their party favor.
[00:03:40] The three party favors I focused on for the first day of my launch was a 5 coffee gift card. You could either choose Starbucks or your local coffee shop because it's always fun to shop local. But I also had a party favor that was for my favorite UX and UI designer notebook, which I absolutely love. And then I had a party favor [00:04:00] for two of my favorite business books.
[00:04:02] Now, here's the tricky part. I snuck this party favor into different pieces of content throughout my site. using a lightbox form. In Squarespace, when you create a contact form, you can toggle on the lightbox option. This means it will display a button, and then when someone clicks on the button, the form will be displayed on top of the website content.
[00:04:22] So what I did was I used custom CSS to style that button so it looked like just another line of text. So someone would be reading a blog post article, and all of a sudden that article would say, also, you found a party favor. When they clicked on that, the form would pop up. It would say, Congratulations, here's what you found.
[00:04:41] And then they could enter their name, their email address, and whatever info I needed to make that magic happen for them. It was a super fun way to integrate this into my website content to encourage people to explore. Now, I want to paint a picture for you about launch day because it did not go off without a hitch.
[00:04:59] [00:05:00] It was very messy. It was very intense. And I would definitely do a few things differently if I were to launch that again today. So let me break this down for you. I want you to picture that it is Tuesday morning. My email went out at 5 a. m. Pacific Time, and as much as I wanted to sleep in, I set the alarm on my phone for 5.
[00:05:19] 30 a. m. At 5. 30 a. m., my alarm goes off. And dreary eyed, I roll over to the side and I open up the email on my phone just to see if I had a few party favors filled out. My inbox. It was full of hundreds of emails, hundreds. What I thought would be a fairly exciting launch turned into a very exciting launch, and within hours, thousands of people visited my website.
[00:05:43] Now I set aside $500 for this party. Favorite budget. And within the first hour, 300 worth of party favors had been claimed. And I wasn't even counting on shipping for sending out the books to people or anything along those lines. There were a lot of [00:06:00] coffees that were claimed and a lot of business books, and I blew through that budget fast.
[00:06:04] I found out that I'm not very good at hiding things. All of these party favors, I'd put quite a few on my site, and apparently, they were very easy to discover, so I had to go back through my website quite early in the morning and pull some of the party favors down from the most obvious areas. Now this takes me to the first key takeaway that I want you to remember when you think about this episode for your own website launch.
[00:06:27] Make sure you write down where the party favors are. That is such an important part. I almost lost two of the coffee contact forms that ended up getting over 60 people filling them out within the first two hours. I almost gave away thousands of dollars worth of coffee, which I was not prepared to do. So make sure that when you set up these party favors.
[00:06:50] You write down where they are. It sounds obvious, but oh my gosh, did I make a mistake on that one. All right, now the other takeaway that I want you to know is that these don't have to [00:07:00] be physical goods. While that was the first phase of this particular website launch, I had a second phase where I offered a different type of party favor, and I'm really glad that I did.
[00:07:11] Not only because my budget was almost spent, but because not everybody likes coffee or wants a book. I needed to make some things that were a little more unique, but also virtual, so I didn't have to put a cap on who could enjoy them. The second type of party favor that I released was a link that I placed on top of an image.
[00:07:29] Now, all of these were placed Squarespace, which uses Classic Editor. I'm gonna get a little technical here, so stick with me. I used a poster image that had a button on top and I used custom CSS to hide that button until someone hovered over it with their cursor. When they hovered over the image with their cursor, a button would appear and that button would take them directly to a digital sticker pack that I had designed.
[00:07:51] That was a lot of fun, and I had about 4, 300 people get digital stickers, which was very exciting. Now, the other digital party favor I [00:08:00] created was also around encouraging content. I told my audience that anyone who commented on one of my new blog posts would get a link to a Figma template. I created a Figma template that was a Squarespace header, both desktop and mobile.
[00:08:15] And I threw in some button designs in there too just for fun. And I told my audience that anyone and everyone who commented on my blog would get this free Figma template. Now this was a really fun way to encourage them to comment on my blog. And I'd say about 80 percent of the blog post comments were legit.
[00:08:33] Some people definitely phoned it in and wrote some kind of spammy stuff, which was disappointing. Now, I sent everyone the template anyway, but I didn't publish those ones because I wanted the comments to be good quality. So that was something that, I don't know, just important to know if you do plan on using this approach for your own website.
[00:08:51] I'll also say that a lot of my audience just clicked on the first post and left a comment there. They didn't really explore the blog as much as I wanted them to. So [00:09:00] that was something I'll definitely have to consider next time I do this process. About halfway through the morning, I went ahead and shifted my blog post schedule to try and rotate different blog articles to the top of the list.
[00:09:11] None of them were time bound, so nothing was very specific for a date, and I was able to rotate those through to try and get more people to look at different blog posts instead of the same one over and over. So that was definitely a lesson learned. I'd say that out of all of my articles, about eight of them didn't get a single comment, which was kind of a bummer.
[00:09:30] But I'm still glad that I gave it this approach, and that I created a different type of party favor for the second day. I think that that was a lot of fun. Now, overall, the whole event was exciting. But it's also stressful, but I also don't regret it. I'm really glad that I took this approach to make this website launch as exciting for my audience as it was for me.
[00:09:50] Instead of launching a brand new website and getting a few hundred hits in the first day, I got thousands, thousands of people participating in the website launch, and [00:10:00] that made it feel like all of the effort that I put into this really was worthwhile. The feedback was also excellent. Having an audience of mostly website designers meant the quality of feedback I got was amazing.
[00:10:12] And even from the non designers that are on my list, people wrote in to give me really important information about how specific links worked in ways that they didn't expect them to, or they were looking for content that was on my old site that they couldn't find on my new site, and of course, spelling errors.
[00:10:28] I tried my best, but there's always going to be a spelling error somewhere, and I had so many wonderful people on my email list reach out with words of encouragement and helpful suggestions for how I could improve my content before I launched it to the rest of the world. That was one of the biggest takeaways of this experience, was the amazing actionable feedback that my audience was able to provide.
[00:10:49] It was invaluable, and I'm so lucky that I had that opportunity to connect with them before I shared my site with the rest of the world. so much. Alright, I covered a lot of this episode, as you can tell I'm very [00:11:00] excited about this whole process and I wanted to give you an insider's look into how it went down.
[00:11:04] So let me wrap this up with a recap of what I did, what I wouldn't do next time, and what I suggest you do if you'd like to try this approach for your next website launch. First things first, document everything, and I mean everything, right down where you've hidden those favors like your life depends on it.
[00:11:22] Trust me, you'll thank me later. Second, set your alarms. You are going to want to keep a close eye on things, especially in the beginning. You'll get a lot of emails and a lot of content, so be prepared to be awake and be in action very early. My third tip is to get sneaky with your favor placement. Make sure that your guests have to work for it a little bit.
[00:11:44] The deeper they explore, the more they're going to appreciate your site, and the more that they're going to appreciate that prize they worked so hard to get. I also suggest choosing party favors that will make your audience excited. Sometimes the best gifts are free, like the figma template that I [00:12:00] shared, or the digital sticker pack that I gave my audience.
[00:12:02] People were really excited about those. And that was a great way for me to keep things under budget while still providing something truly remarkable for my audience. I also want to emphasize how important it was to make it exclusive. I wanted to make sure that the people on my email list feel like the VIPs that they are, but I also didn't want the rest of my audience to feel excluded.
[00:12:24] So I did spend a solid two or three weeks reminding everyone that wasn't on my email list that they needed to join before this would happen, setting out that level of urgency, but also giving them enough time to make that decision. I also want you to remember that it's important to be prepared. But also, flexible, okay?
[00:12:43] Plan meticulously, but be ready to pivot. If something's not working, switch it up mid party. Your adaptability is going to be your superpower, and it's going to be the success of this website launch. This was quite a fun experience for me and hopefully for you as my audience as well. If you did [00:13:00] have a blast on this website launch experience, let me know in the comments, if you're watching this on YouTube or checking this out on my blog.
[00:13:06] If you're listening to this episode on Spotify or Apple or wherever you happen to listen to your podcasts, hop in the reviews and let me know. This website launch party was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun, and I really want to encourage you to try something this creative with your own website launch or relaunch.
[00:13:24] Make it an exclusive event, create some fun party favors, and make sure you remind people before the event happens so they can get on that VIP list. If you enjoyed this episode of Think Inside the Square, please let me know in the comments, leave a review wherever you happen to be listening to this episode, and hang out with me on Instagram.
[00:13:42] Send me a DM, at thinkinsidethesquare, I'd love to hear from you. And to all of you who got to participate in my website launch, thank you for being a VIP. I had so much fun having this virtual party with you. I'm looking forward to doing it again, hopefully a few years from now, I need a little bit of a break.
[00:13:59] All right, that wraps [00:14:00] it up for this episode of Think Inside the Square. Thank you so much for tuning in and most importantly, have fun with your website. Bye for now.
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