Consumer launch check-list?
Anonymous
April 3rd, 2013
I'm trying to compile a checklist for a (closed beta) launch of our e-commerce startup. Some are more obvious -- e.g., google analytics, accounting software, etc. but even "obvious" is subjective. Want to make sure I'm not missing something; any suggestions on what should be part of that list? I'm happy to compile responses and have it serve as a resource for future startups launching consumer products.
Thanks so much, Christina
Nick Baum Founder of StoryWorth
April 3rd, 2013
- Functional testing: does everything work? Test everything end-to-end the night before launch.
- Cross-browser testing: does it work on all the platforms you want to support? IE8? iOS?
- Copy: have you polished all the text on your site? Are there any parts that still bug you? Now is the time to fix them.
- Customer support: Do people have a way to contact you? Do you have an FAQ? Olark, Desk.com, etc
- Analytics: How are you going to measure the launch? Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Intercom, etc
- Monitoring: Are you collecting logs? Do you get notifications for exceptions? How do you know if something is going wrong?
- Legal: do you have a TOS and Privacy Policy
- Load testing: how does my site handle a spike in traffic? Can you scale capacity?
- Social: do you have a Twitter account and Facebook page? Do they have nice logos and header images? What are you going to post on launch day? Do you want tweet or like buttons?
- Blog: do you want one? Are you committed to maintaining it? What will you post on launch day?
- Messaging: what's your one line description? what are the worst questions someone could ask?
- PR: contacts at press, ready-to-send launch email, assets (highres logo, screenshots)
- Amplification: identify Twitter followers with a large audience, prepare to reach out to them
Lilia Tovbin Co-founder at BigMailer.io
April 3rd, 2013
John Rodley Technical co-founder with exits
April 3rd, 2013
- Site monitoring, not just for traffic but for errors. I'd test a page on every major branch, especially any branch that runs on a different machine and monitor all your services (MySQL, Apache ...) independently. Make sure that any page error or service monitoring error goes to you in realtime. Fair warning: this will suck, but it's a closed beta. If it were my baby, I'd have successful monitoring runs going to me in realtime too. I've had monitoring systems fail, leaving me to think that a dead system was hunky dory. Sigh.
- Have an emergency sheet of who to contact when it all goes south. The whole world will be conspiring against you at launch and only your chain of vendors (DNS, ISP, programming ...) is between you and disaster. If your DNS name suddenly starts resolving to the web server for the Shih-Tzu Club of Albania who do you call? If half the internet can't route to your IP block, who do you call? If your monitoring from above starts streaming errors at you, who's the first call?
- All the people on the emergency sheet, know where they're going to be when the you know what hits the fan. Make sure you note who does and doesn't step up during launch and ditch the losers. Imho, not answering the phone, or failing to call back quickly is a failure to step up.
- Backup.
- I always like having warm spares but that's kind of old-school. What can I say, I'm old.
Michael Brill Technology startup exec focused on AI-driven products
April 4th, 2013
Anonymous
April 3rd, 2013
Anonymous
April 7th, 2013
Paul Travis Multifaceted Online Executor: Product Marketing to Program Mgmt. to Business Development
April 4th, 2013
- What does the brand-new visitor experience landing on the home page? Is his/her eye drawn to your intended outcome (demo, signup, etc)?
- Can you acknowledge the returning visitor who didn't act and encourage that outcome?
- What email does the visitor receive the first, second, third day to confirm their relationship and encourage the next action step?
John Rodley Technical co-founder with exits
April 7th, 2013
- give a big fat thank you to all your real-world helpers