timing site launch

should i wait before putting up a less-than-perfect site?

[tyrojds]

i am having second thoughts about my yet-to-be-launched site's readiness. i thought it was in pretty much ready to go but this site has provided so much good advice on how to improve it, i'm wondering is there a downside to launching a site before implementing the wealth of ideas i've come upon on this forum? or should i put it up in less-than-perfect condition and work on it then? thanks.

[agerhart]

There may be other variables that make a site launch imperative, but if there are not, then I would wait until the site is completely done before launching it.

[tyrojds]

thank you for your advice; it certainly makes sense. just one more thought, however; i was thinking, since the site trades is autos and related products, which people buy only once every few years, i figure if the site's up at least there's a chance they'd buy there and if it's not up they'd buy elsewhere by the time it was. don't really need people coming back again and again. would this mitigate your advice in any way? the site is probably in good enough shape to begin to generate some income.

[nipear]

I suggest you put your site up ASAP. Why? Since your site is retail, the sooner engines such as google pick you up the sooner you will be in the results. Remember it takes a good month or 2, to get listed in google. That's a lot of time to fix things up. Before submitting to yahoo, just make sure all the links work and there are no half done pages.

I've gone both ways with retail sites in the past, and it's a long wait having a perfectly completed site waiting for google to pick you up along with orders to come in....

[agerhart]

There are arguments for both sides:

- On one hand, you put the site up even though it is not completely done and optimized, hoping that you will get a few rankings and make a few sales. But, you will not be assured rankings or traffic as the site is not done or optimized completely. How are you going to make sales with rankings or traffic?

- The other side of the coin is waiting until the site is completely developed and optimized, and then you launch the site aggressively within the search engines and directories. The benefit to this option is that you can come straight out of the gates and enter the search engines with good rankings and watch the traffic spike. Instead of starting out on the 4th page and battling to the 1st page, you are already there.

[Hawkgirl]

If I waited until our site was "ready" for launch, we still wouldn't have launched it and we've been up and running since June 2000.

:)

Launch now, continue to optimize. That's my advice.