Keys to Success After a Website Launch

1. Tailored Support Plan

Support and maintenance can sometimes be overlooked or not even budgeted for however ensuring you have a thorough plan for your new website after go live is the first key to long and meaningful relationship with your website. With new technology comes different concepts and a different way of doing things. Often support plans include training tops ups, telephone support for your entire team and even ideas on how to improve performance and accessibility after go-live. Implementing an SLA (Service Level Agreement) tailored to the your particular needs and organizational gaps provides your digital team the assurances that you are not alone in this journey of managing your web presence. SLA’s can often include regular audits for:

• security compliance

• privacy compliance

• performance optimization and

• software updates.

Occasionally your internal teams are reassigned or there's turnover so ensuring you have a support plan with your web vendor provides stability and continuity across the varying teams for a frustration free transition when people change. Your digital agency can act as your backup team who can step in at any time and knows your organization and your website intimately. So a well devised support plan provides the extra peace of mind key to post launch success.

 

2. Customized Training

Getting the credentials to your new website is just the beginning to managing your new web presence. You will need to learn how to take advantage of all the great new tools and features that comes with the new website. Any great CMS should be easy-to-use however customized training for your particular site is crucial for pain-free editing and content management. Frankly, the easier a site is to manage the longer it will be a productive marketing and communications tool for your team. Far too often websites that are cumbersome or challenging to manage don't get updated and quickly become obsolete. The customized training plan should include onboarding, editing and administration but also best practice for search engine optimization, performance optimization and accessibility. In addition to custom live training we offer standard e-learning modules for those team members who are keen to learn more about the platform at their own pace. These e-learning modules include editing and the more advanced marketing automation training and even training modules for developers if the interest is there. The curriculum should include the following topics:

• Navigate and customize the administration interface

• Manage the website structure

• Update and edit page content

• Edit content in multiple languages

• Add files to the website and manage their properties

• Create new structured pages

• Add and adjust widgets to manage dynamic content

• Create and publish custom forms

• Work with pages in a team using Workflows

• View the page history

3. Thorough Documentation

You can never have enough great documentation. Most off-the-shelf platforms have a library of training material and reference documentation to support its user base and developers. This documentation must be up-to-date, searchable and always online. For content editors the documentation topics covered include:

• Dashboards

• Working with pages

• Editing rich text content

• Working with files

• Workflows and scheduling

• Forms

• Configuration for editors

Additional documentation that comes in handy for the more involved projects should include content governance and guidelines for tone and language. We also provide our clients with an in-depth guide with tips and rules to maintaining accessibility compliance after go-live. If you have an engaged development team occasionally we document the custom coded modules to help with transition to the clients development team. As I already stated but important enough to emphasize that its never a bad thing to have too much documentation where budget and resources allow.

4. Complete Control Over Your Pages and Layouts

Success comes with the ability to do everything you need to without engaging the agency who built your site. These days control over page layouts and widgets are expected and encouraged. Having the ability to create flexible layouts gives your editors and marketers the keys to take their content to the next level. Tools like a page builder provides editors and marketers easy-to-use drag and drop tools to build engaging content. Control doesn't just mean content but control over features including forms and fields, reports and layouts, security and user access and even workflow. Some content management platforms have multiple built in access roles from the highest being Global Administrator to Editors with the added ability to fine tune roles where need be. Being a Global Administrator comes with responsibility and complete control. With custom training and administrator access you can be master of your domain - pun intended.

5. A Future Proof Digital Experience Platform

The previous 4 keys to success are essential for the short and medium term life span for your website. The key to long term success is the ability to expand and grow into features without having to rebuild or redesign your site. Starting with an enterprise class CMS from the outset allows your website to plan and enable or features as you need them. Generally licensing costs can accommodate adding in modules or features at a later date but every CMS is different so explore pricing during the evaluation phase.

There are literally hundreds of capable Content Management Systems but in this key we introduce the term Digital Experience Platform (DXP) which is basically a soup'ed up CMS that comes equipped with Enterprise Features you can grow into with your digital strategy without having to switch platforms or providers. Modern day DXP features provide:

• Headless or Content as a Service options,

• Ecommerce,

• Personalization

• Marketing Automation

• Contact Management

• Lead Scoring

• Email Marketing

• A/B and MVT testing

• Web Analytics

• AI and integration protocols

Implementing a platform that comes with robust features sets you up for longer digital lifespan and ultimately lower total cost of ownership.

Summary

It’s tough to limit to just 5 keys to success as there are many that the best agencies will equip clients with as they venture out on their own with their new technology. In the end its a special blend of platform. support and knowledge transfer to enable clients to succeed in the long term. Success is made up of many factors however for the purpose of this blog we are primarily addressing website longevity and its delight to own and manage.