No one cares about your new website unless you give them a reason to
The first dozen or so sites I built for clients were anticlimactic. We built their site. Published it. Maybe posted to Instagram. And that was it.
This was back in the day of many designers claiming that the websites they built for clients earned them X amount of ridiculous oodles of money right off the bat.
So early designer Catie couldn’t help but wonder why some people’s websites seemed to immediately convert.
The answer? It’s not so cut-and-dried.
For one, any designer taking full credit for how a website converts is also taking credit for whoever did the copy, brand identity, and SEO. Could that be one person? Hypothetically, yes. But most likely, no.
Just publishing a new website will not immediately garner a surge in organic traffic and new inquiries without an existing blog strategy and other marketing channels driving traffic to your website.
Should I scream that for the kids in the back who are just skimming through right now?
Once I really realized this, I built a website launch strategy into my Signature Site offer.
The first client to go through that version of my website design offer was The Painted Horse Winery. We’re rounding up on one year since launching their site next week, and I’ll be unpacking all of the data in the next edition of the Behind the Brand newsletter.
Their website launch strategy was simple, but also very intentional.
They were switching email marketing providers as well as website platforms, so we moved their newsletter over first and communicated that a new website was coming, along with the changes happening in their content.
We launched their new website on a Monday, so we had the first few days of the week (their slow or closed days) to test everything out live.
Then we announced their website launch with a simple giveaway and treasure hunt that I built into the website’s pop-up. This got us 43 new subscribers in a matter of a few days as well as lots of new subscribers engaging in the website and clicking through all of the pages. We picked one winner who got two free bottles of wine.
Pamela, the founder of Painted Horse, even cited the website launch strategy as a highlight in their feedback, stating: “When we launched the website, everything changed! Before the website launch, she started putting out teasers in the newsletters about the coming release of the website. She then offered a giveaway to whomever counted the most Fraunky Donkeys (our beloved donkey) on the site. That was a huge success and it got people to click through every page!”
Starting Monday, I’ll have a similar search on my site where you’ll have to find all three of these branding signs and mouse over them to find their hidden messages. Combine the three messages to form a phrase and enter it with your name and email to win your choice of a FREE illustrated icon for your brand (you’ll be able to check out my new and improved portfolio on the website) OR a 1:1 Studio Session to create the strategy behind your brand’s current pivot.
If a new website is on your to-do list this year, keep reading to learn how to create the strategy behind your website launch (and why it’s not the same as just hitting publish), how to design a reason to get people on your website, and tips for finally getting your website off your to-do list (especially if you are DIYing it).
Publishing your website and launching your website are two very different things.
Publishing your website just means that your updated design is now live on the interwebs. But in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a whole LOT of things live on the interwebs. Launching your website means you are creating a marketing campaign around your website launch, giving people a reason to care and an incentive to visit your site.
Your website launch and incentives (which we will cover below) can be teased in your marketing. The key is: you gotta tell somebody. And in today’s world, you actually have to tell your audience A LOT of times. More than you think you need to. Chances are, you are going to feel like you are talking about it way too much. That’s a sign you are doing it right.
How to design a reason to get people on your website
You don’t have to conceptualize and hand-illustrate a hover animation treasure hunt for your website launch. That’s just how hard my particular brain and skillset decided to go.
Painted Horse Winery’s “treasure hunt” was simple. You just had to count how many donkeys were on their website.
If I was launching Crystal Smith Paul’s website again, I might have you enter the number of times you can find their book cover on the site.
I’ve heard of someone (who I can’t for the life of me remember to give credit to at the moment) who loves Coca Cola (and that is a known part of their personal brand) having a treasure-hunt style search for cans of Coke.
If I were launching the website of an illustration client like Ash Burnside, you could even have someone find the ONE black disco-ball-planet illustration and click on it to enter to win.
The point is - you can pull something like this off on your own as long as you have an email marketing platform set up & imagery on your website!
You can also run some kind of sale or promotion as part of your website launch. You can learn more about the offer promotions I’m running as part of CJ’s Signature Site launch in the Behind the Screen section of this email. kicking things off RIGHT FREAKING NOW by my subscribers ONLY $90 off a Studio Session through Friday the 13th at midnight EST. Click here to book yours
Tips for getting website off your to-do list (especially if you are DIYing it)
You’ve planned the launch, built out the incentive, designed your site, and stared at wayyy too much blue light for wayyy too many hours. But still, that sneaky little website is just full of loose ends.
And it’s something I have been nervous to talk about.
Because as a designer, if you tell me we are launching on March 5th, we’re launching on March 5th.
But when it’s your own thing?
It. is. so. hard. to. stick. to. a. deadline.
I knew there had to be a neuroscience or psychological reason why it is so much harder to meet a deadline for yourself than it is for a client, so I did a little research.
Turns out your brain doesn’t always “believe” your own deadlines
- Deadlines from outside you (a client, a boss, a platform) trigger stronger threat and reward circuits in the brain. Your amygdala and stress‑response systems kick in because there are real consequences—lost money, reputation hit, contract issues—so your brain allocates attention and energy more reliably.(source)(source)
- When you set your own deadline, your brain treats it like a soft suggestion, not a real contract. Over time, your habits can train the reward system to ignore your own deadlines because you “move” them, so dopamine and urgency don’t fire the same way.(source)
- Your brain also underestimates time and overestimates how much work you can do later, which means self‑imposed deadlines feel distant and flexible, even when they’re not.
Throw in some neurospice and….
(e.g., ADHD, autistic, otherwise wired), Several overlapping factors make self‑imposed deadlines even harder:
- Executive dysfunction means the parts of your brain that handle planning, initiation, and working memory are under strain. So even if you know the deadline “should” motivate you, your brain struggles to break the task into steps, start, or switch gears. (source)
- Time blindness makes it hard to feel how much time has passed or how close you are to the deadline. From the inside, it feels like “there’s still time,” even when there isn’t, so your urgency doesn’t spike until it’s too late.
- Emotional regulation and perfectionism mean you might avoid starting because you’re afraid of not doing it “right.” Self‑imposed deadlines often sit on top of this anxiety, turning them into a source of guilt instead of a motivator. (Hiiiiii ME x1000)
With clients, the external pressure can actually override some of this, because the threat is concrete and social, not just internal guilt. Your brain treats client deadlines as real contracts and your own deadlines as negotiable suggestions, so you’re not “failing”—you’re experiencing a normal mismatch between how your nervous system weights external vs internal commitments. If you’re neurodivergent, add time blindness, executive strain, and emotional regulation into that mix, and self‑imposed deadlines become even more fragile.
- Accountability and social consequences are powerful motivators. Which is more than half of the reason why I announced my website was launching in the first place. Creating a launch and marketing campaign around your website does double duty as an added layer of accountability and a way to get the word out create some noise about your brand.
- With self‑imposed deadlines, you’re both the rule‑maker and the rule‑breaker, so you unconsciously bargain with yourself (“I’ll just move it one day”) and feel less guilty. This self‑compassion is healthy, but it weakens the deadline’s psychological “teeth.” At some point you have to pick and choose and trust yourself. For example, I had to choose launching my site now over waiting another week or so to launch my blog and another landing page I want to build.
- Ask for support. This was one of my BIGGEST fails when it came to this website launch. Not only was it not in the budget for me to get any support in the form of help on the project itself, but I didn’t proactively communicate to my partner that I was even going to be spending 10+ days, horse blinders on, focusing on getting my website done. My partner wasn’t able to support me or the launch in the way I needed, because I didn’t tell them it was happening. I struggle with working in a vacuum (hi, I’m an eldest daughter by nine years, first-born grandchild, and my mom’s only kid). Giving people a reason to care about your website isn’t just about your audience. If you want your IRL support system to care, you’ve got to give them a heads up, especially if they work in a totally different industry or realm of the universe and have no clue what goes into a website build!
