THE LAUNCH PAD

THE LAUNCH PAD PROCESS

There are two primary reasons we want to launch quickly.

1) Stop Guessing - In traditional web design, you're building in a 3-6 month "bubble" and making many assumptions about what you think will work well. Over the course of a 3-6 month site build, this adds up to a lot of assumptions. 

In GDD, we want get out of the "bubble" as quick as possible so we can have real people interacting with your real website in order to collect data. Then we use this data to help guide decisions and validate our assumptions. 

2) Quicker Time to Value - If you're spending 3+ months and thousands of dollars on a website that's living offline in a computer, your business isn't getting any value from it. 

We want to launch quickly so that your business can start seeing results as quick as possible to help payback the initial investment. 

It is a Balancing Act...
It's important to note that as a website design strategist, you must balance three elements. 

We lean towards launching quickly, however, speed should not compromise your ability to provide user value and the happiness of the team/stakeholders. 

How to Launch Quickly?
There are many ways to speed up the launch of the new site and each website is going to use a different mix of approaches. Here are a few examples:

• Prioritize and start with only the 20% that make 80% of the impact 
• Develop different processes for pages based on the page's impact to goals
• Migrate the existing site, give it a "new coat of paint" and then focus the majority of your time on rebuilding just the top 3-5 most impactful pages to start.
• Leverage pre-built resources and templates vs. building net new
• Switching from waterfall to agile process

We cover these and more in detail in the GDD Agency Certification. 

THE RESULT

The result is a website that looks and performs better than your current website and which website visitors can interact with. 

MYTH! - A Launch Pad website is a half-built website. 

• TRUTH - Launch Pad websites look just like any other site, no one will tell the difference. This is because the change happens in the mentality and process used to build the site, not the end result.

Example Launch Pad Site
via Media Junction

Read the full launch pad case study here.

Now that the site is live your business can start generating results, collecting real user data and use that data to help guide additional building, find ways to innovate and optimize what you have.