What’s A Website Soft Launch & Why Do We Recommend Them?

Picture the scene. You’ve spent weeks or months working with us on a website redesign. The design has been signed off, and the content is all in place. You’re itching to tell the world about your shiny new website, but we tell you to wait to make the big announcement, at least for a short while.

It might seem a little deflating, but a soft launch protects the very thing you just invested heavily in, your website’s first impression.

What Actually Happens On Website Go Live Day

Launch day is exciting. It’s the culmination of months of hard work and strategy. But it is rarely as simple as flicking a switch. Even on a well panned and executed project, there are usually additional things still to do once the site goes live:

• Fixing minor bugs or layout quirks that only show up on the live server.
• Adding or verifying analytics and conversion tracking (Google Analytics, Tag Manager, ad pixels, etc.)
• Checking forms are sending notifications to the right inboxes and CRM.
• Testing the live site across multiple browsers, devices and screen sizes.
• Implementing redirect mapping to preserve organic search performance and continuity.
• Submitting new sitemaps to Search Console.
• Reviewing page speeds and Core Web Vitals in the live environment.
• Checking SSL, security headers, and any dev/staging site settings that need switching off (like a ‘no-index’ tag left over from development.)
• Final proofing and searches for typos and placeholder text.
• A crawl to check for any broken links or other crawl issues that may have slipped through, like redirect loops and chains, internal redirects that need updating, and so on.
• Confirming cookie consent, privacy policy, and accessibility statements are all up-to-date.
• Ensuring your CMP is behaving and firing correctly, as per user choices.

None of this means that the redesign wasn’t done properly. It is simply the nature of moving a site from a controlled development environment, into a live environment, where real browsers, real devices, and real traffic start interacting with it.

The Risks Of Announcing Too Quickly After Launch

We’ve seen it happen before (you see a lot over 23 years building websites). A client sees the new site has gone live mere minutes after it has it has been pushed live, and gets excited (rightly so), and shares it immediately across social media, in an email to their mailing list, or even standing in front of an audience at a conference. The trouble is, live, doesn’t always mean ready.

If a form isn’t yet delivering notifications to your sales team, or a landing page the client has added last minute hasn’t been checked on mobile in the live environment, or your consent management isn’t configured quite right for the traffic you’re about to send its way, then that excitement can backfire. You end up driving your audience (sometimes your most engaged or important users) to a site that isn’t ready to put its best foot forward.

First impressions are hard to undo, and a clunky mobile experience, or a visual bug, can cost you more than the what the redesign set out to fix.

What Does A Soft Launch Actually Look Like?

A soft launch means that the new site goes live, but quietly. It is accessible to the public, and natural traffic will find its way there, but it isn’t yet being promoted.

This gives us time to:

• Run through a post-launch checklist in the live environment (some things can only be properly tested once the site is out of the dev environment.)
• Monitor for any bugs, errors, or unexpected behaviour under real world conditions.
• Fine tune performance and fix anything that wasn’t visible during development.
• Make sure every tracking and reporting tool is capturing data correctly from day one, so you’re not missing important data.
• Allow all integrations and important functionality to be tested in the live environment, with real users.
• Give internal stakeholders, and you, a chance to give the site a proper review, before it is promoted to your customer base, prospects, or the press.

Once everything is confirmed to be working as expected, and any important snags are ironed out, that’s when we give our customers the green light to shout about it through email, press releases, social posts, and so on.

Protect Your Investment

A soft launch typically adds a short window, usually a maximum of two weeks, between go live and promotion of a new site. That’s a small trade-off against the weak first impression you could create by sending a wave of traffic and attention to a site that isn’t fully bedded in yet.

Think of it less as a delay, and more as quality control. You’ve put time, budget, and effort into a redesign that represents your brand. A soft launch makes sure that when you do announce the launch to the world, everyone who clicks through sees the site at its best, working properly, tracking properly, and ready to make the impression you intended.

The TL;DR

Go live quietly first, check everything is working exactly as it should, and then launch officially. It’s a small extra step that protects the reputation and results your new site was built to deliver.

Impact Media® has been crafting award-winning websites since 2003.

If you’d like to learn more about our website redesign approach and if it could be a good fit for your organisation, drop us an email or give James a call.