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Earlier we posted an article about essential tasks to complete before launching a website. In this current article, we discuss project process elements that result in successful website launches.

A website launch is a time of celebration tangled up with trepidation. Will the launch be successful? Will visitors respond well to the new website? Was anything forgotten or overlooked? Ensuring that celebration triumphs, in the end, means having a thorough and comprehensive launch plan in place.

Below we discuss four elements that should be part of every website launch.

A systematic testing process. The need to test a website before launch is common knowledge. But too often project teams do not employ a comprehensive testing process with standardized acceptance criteria. Hence, a website that appears to be rigorously tested, can encounter significant issues once live.

Establishing a comprehensive and standardized test plan with explicit acceptance criteria (or acceptance testing) will not only ensure that a website is thoroughly tested before launch, but that testing can be consistently repeated before and after go live.

All hands on deck. A great deal of work, performed by several project team members, goes into designing a website. Each team member possesses a unique understanding of how a given website works. As such, it is important that all team members are aware that a launch is imminent and be available should questions or problems arise during and after launch - which they always do.

With all team members ready to offer a solution to issues that arise during a website launch, problems will be quickly diagnosed and corrected.

Well-documented deployment plan. A website launch should be accompanied by a well-documented deployment plan. A deployment plan is a sequence of operations performed by the launch team each time an entire website, or updates to a website, are deployed to a live hosting environment.

A well-documented deployment plan contains all the steps necessary for a successful launch and will ensure that when a launch occurs nothing is overlooked or partially executed. A deployment plan also means that should issues arise during launch, the plan can be analyzed to discover where a step was missed or improperly applied and correctly repeated.

Appropriate hosting solution. No matter how well a website is designed and tested before launch, should an appropriate hosting solution not be in place, the launch will not be successful. An appropriate hosting solution should not only include how the hosting environment is set up but also how the hosting solution is managed and by whom.

A hosting solution should account for components, such as:

• Amount of server capacity needed to handle a website’s traffic.

• Environment set up, such as redundancy and server types employed.

• Hosting features, such as alerts, monitoring, and backups.

• Level of hosting management, for example, does the solution come with proactive management services, passive management by request only, or no management at all.

Keep in mind that you have one chance to successfully launch a website. Do it once and do it right.

If you are interested in learning more about the successful design and launch of a website, contact Avatar New York today.

Avatar New York is an innovating, award-winning web design New York firm dedicated to providing clients with responsive websites that help grow brands and convert visitors to customers. With an expertise in web development, branding, cloud hosting, mobile app development, and CMS and e-commerce solutions, Avatar New York creates intelligent websites for any type of business.