Getting prepared to launch your new website
Launching a brand new website is a momentous occasion – it marks an exciting new era for an organisation’s marketing and online presence. That said, a website launch doesn’t occur in just a moment; it’s a process that begins long before it goes live, continuing over months until the new website has settled into its normal role.
During the website creation process, there’s a list of tasks that both the client and agency must complete. In this post, we’ll guide you on how to prepare for launching your new website, what your responsibilities will be, and how to navigate this important phase successfully.
TLDR: In this post, we’ll take you through the steps and tasks required to get a brand new website live.
3, 2, 1…ready for launch
An organisation’s website is one of its biggest assets. Not just a technical product, it underpins many aspects of the day to day functions, including marketing, fundraising, comms, recruitment and service delivery. Therefore, we know how important it is to get right.
When planning your new website’s launch, there are a number of steps to consider and put in place to ensure things run as smoothly as possible. That’s not to say there won’t be hiccups; however, the more you can prepare in advance, the better the outcome.
Where to begin…
You’ll have already established a key contact in your organisation for your agency to deal with directly. As the launch approaches, it’s imperative that all internal feedback and decisions be filtered through them to keep lines of communication and the focus of the work clear for both parties.
It’s so important to work together with your agency during a project like this. You’re all bringing different types of expertise, and as such, sharing the responsibility will lead to the best outcome for your new site. At this stage, you’ll have a chance to validate the staging website/pre-production environment – this should confirm that everything’s in place and as expected; you’ll also be able to confirm the content, functionality and user journeys meet your expectations.
There’s naturally some inherent risk involved in launching a new website. Therefore, it’s in everyone’s interest to both identify and try to reduce these risks during the website build process. Any technical risks will be mitigated by your agency. You as the client are best placed to help reduce any organisational risks by making timely decisions and validations, and managing your stakeholders’ involvement and expectations.
Have your project specification to hand so you can refer to and discuss with your agency. You can also collaborate with them to decide on a ‘go/no-go’ checklist so important considerations and requirements are kept front and centre. This will also allow you both to define the criteria for success.
Building your pre-launch checklist
We’ve put together some pointers to help you maximise your team’s readiness for your website’s launch. We’ve taken dozens of clients through this process and wanted to share our expertise, so feel free to make use of what we’ve learned:
Be available
This is the most important time for any key contacts or stakeholders to be available for – your agency will most likely have questions and decisions that require timely answers, as well as someone to validate functionality. An agency worth its salt will advise you of what and who are needed well in advance of the project plan; therefore, we highly recommend that no-one who may be required during the launch book any leave around this time.
Set roles and responsibilities
It’s a good idea to assign everyone’s roles and responsibilities for the post-launch period prior to the website launch. One of the key tasks for both agency and client-side team members will be to ‘smoke test’ the website to find any potential issues that require resolution. They’ll also be able to check the key user journeys and validate that processes are working correctly, for example: contact forms, notifications and sign-up features.
Create a post-launch task list
It’s highly likely that you or members of your team will notice things that could be improved as the site launch comes to fruition. However, you want to be mindful of anything that could potentially derail the launch process at this point. Put anything that pops up and won’t be fixed at this point in a ‘post-launch’ list so it can be addressed at a later date when the website is stable – this will also protect the current direction of the website and not add further tasks to an already full work load.
Prepare your internal communications
A clear communications process helps everyone to stay on task and ensures team members understand the launch plan fully. We recommend providing a pre-and-post launch document for all relevant team members with important information, such as:
- Who to contact if they have any questions
- What to expect over the first few days of a launch
- What changes should or shouldn’t be made during the launch
- The process for reporting issues, including:
- Who the key contact to get in touch with is
- What information to provide when reporting
- How priorities will be assessed during this transition period
Having this in place will mean any genuine issues can be resolved quickly, something you’ll be thankful for if any arise.
Build in contingency plans for any business-critical processes
Take some time to consider what would happen if any temporary issues came up, such as with donations, enquiries or applications. Once you’ve identified them, decide how these potential interruptions in key services will be taken care of – perhaps include it in your pre-and-post launch documentation to keep everyone abreast of what to do in this situation.
Implement a content freeze
During the launch phase, it may be necessary to implement a content freeze while the launch process starts. This depends on the circumstances, but it’ll simplify things for your agency, as it provides time for them to undertake a final content migration. We usually discuss this early on in the process with our clients, informing them of any specific freeze times we need to put in place.
Hold a final pre-launch meeting
Having a final meeting pre-launch will enable you to make sure everyone involved is on board and knows what they’re doing. Use this time to:
- Walk through the launch plan
- Clarify everyone’s roles and responsibilities
- Confirm timings and expectations
- Review everything and confirm everyone’s happy to proceed
Any questions that come out of this meeting can be referred to your agency, who should be happy to assist. Once both teams are on the same page, you’ll be ready to go.
A soft launch is a good way to go
It can be really exciting to announce your new website to your audiences and stakeholders; however, it’s worth holding off until you know everything is working correctly to shout about it, even if the switch-over happens quickly. We recommend having a soft-launch period, as this allows a time of quiet for us to validate the functionality of the website and to allow it to stabilise.
There are other factors that can cause small delays when launching, for example: the domain name changing over – sometimes this can take up to 48 hours to fully take place. As such, you should align your marketing campaigns to reflect this. By launching quietly, you give your agency and in-house team time to correct any issues, and then you can announce your shiny new site once confidence in its performance is high.
Even the most well-tested of websites can reveal small issues once it’s in the hands of its users, which is very normal. Most agencies will advise you to expect a handful of minor issues to crop up on launch; it’s also why we carefully monitor everything on our end for our clients so we can jump on things as quickly as possible.
Launch quietly, celebrate loudly 🎉
Once the new website is stable, schedule an internal communication to all staff to announce that it’s gone live. You can include details of all the changes that have taken place and let them know about any new features and/or resources you’ve added.
Now it’s time to celebrate this achievement! You’ve all worked hard on things like the content creation, data migration, design and implementation of the website, so you can feel pleased that you’ve got it to this point.
When the dust has settled, it’s a good time to reflect on how the project went – you can provide any constructive feedback and gratitude to your agency, which they’ll appreciate. Use this period of retrospection to discuss what went well, what could be improved, and to identify future enhancement opportunities for your new site.
This certainly isn’t the end of the relationship for your organisation and the agency you’ve been working with. It’s the beginning of the next phase in, hopefully, a strong partnership.
