Home Stretch…Lists, Tests and a Little Stress!

Posted by Lara Wood on 3 October 2011

We’re coming to the end of our little experiment and I can share one big result with you. Making your timeline public? Very effective.

As we sprint to the finish however, it makes sense to take a moment to talk about some things you should be doing before you hit the big switch.

Testing

After all the effort you’ve put in to making sure your strategy was sound, your social media made sense and your design was fantastic you want your “ta-da” moment to be awesome. So have a testing plan. Don’t kid yourself…there will be bugs. But you can make sure that they are little ones that only you notice, not big ones that ruin the experience. Proof, click, kick the tires AND have everyone standing by to fix any issues after launch. If you’ve built it right, and you have a good CMS, adjustments should be quick and easy.

Analytics

This could be its own post (and I’m sure it will be after launch) but for now let me just say this: have an analytics solution on your site, and watch it from the start. No matter how good your plan and design, there is always room for improvement based on real-time data.

We’ll do that right after launch…

I could also title this scope creep. When you are working with a deadline you need to stay on plan. It’s inevitable that your brilliant, engaged team will come up with a plethora of additions (yes, I said plethora) but you have to stay focused. Capture cool ideas and “nice-to’haves” and build a separate enhancement plan to add those things. You might need another scary public deadlines but MAKE SURE you don’t lose them.

Push the big red button and tell your friends

There isn’t really a big red button. I asked them to build me one but it was out of scope.

Once you’ve checked everything twice, put everyone on stand-by and made sure all the components of your plan are ready and aligned it’s time to launch and promote, promote, promote. Have a plan to push your site in social media, include it in your traditional media and collateral…basically put it everywhere. The tools are only good if people use them.

Whew! That was a little longer than usual, but this last minute check-list is key. Now if you’ll excuse me I have some testing to get back to.