what i learned from launching three websites in a single day
the first thing i learned was that i should be ok with being a little bat-shit crazy. once that was out of the way (which happened far too easily), i could go about the task of making three websites go live on the same day – one of which needed to go live at a specific time (hadn’t done that before).
the sites i launched yesterday are:
yourbigbeautifulbookplan.com – a site for danielle laporte + linda siversten’s new book, which is hot as all get out (and the stats for the site after a single day prove it).
bookmama.com – a site for linda siversten’s editor and proposal work, plus writing retreats. she’s a regular “book-baby-birther” (say that three times fast).
pacificelements.ca – when my favourite yoga teacher needed a website for her yoga classes, teacher training and workshop work, how could i say no? the result is a very nature/tofino inspired palette infused into a clean and functional site. basically – if i taught yoga, i’d want a site that looks exactly like this.
what was learned
although i had never done it before, i like the idea of launching at a specific time. it gives the feeling of a grand opening of a new store or pulling the curtains back and revealing a new product. to do this, the DNS/domain needs to be set a day or two in advance, since that can take a while. so i now think it’s better to have a brief “coming soon” page on the live server and deal with all the domain stuff earlier. that way when the site is ready, i just flip a switch to make it public, and there’s no waiting for DNS propagation.
the next thing i learned was that i like being under the gun (for brief periods). in order to pull of 3 separate sites launching i had to be 100% focused on everything i was doing – i only took a tiny break to eat some pancakes (for energy purposes only). now that they’re launched and done properly, i can take a breather. so i’d rather have a lot of work to get done in a set period of time, then take some time off, rather than drag out work over days/weeks/whatever. deadlines are a good tool for focusing.
having a good team in place would be the next thing i think is a key factor – since two of the three projects had a group of phenomenally-talented-folk working with me behind the scenes getting the content and other misc bits sorted out.
it’s also good to manage expectations of what can (and better yet: what cannot) be done on launch day with clients. thankfully this was not the case yesterday, but it has happened in the past. so make certain everyone involved has done everything to ensure the site perfect at least a few days before your launch date. just as i (as a developer) test the site in all browsers and make sure all the bugs are worked out – have the client make sure all content, photos, nomenclature is exactly the way it should be too. so when the launch date comes around, the only things required is to make the site live and have a glass of champagne (or sparking fruit juice).
and now, since yesterday is over, i’m having a sparkling fruit juice.
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