Published on April 05, 2011 How long should you wait to go live?
You’ve got your site designed and built by your online shop provider, loaded your products and set up your payment and shipping methods. You have done a bit of testing and things seem to be okay. Should you go live now? Or wait?
The answer is that you should make sure that you have thoroughly tested and checked the customer experience before you go live. Like any technology and computer application, shopping cart software will do exactly as it’s told to do and if your products aren’t set up correctly or your payment methods, your customers could see errors on checkout or not get the experience desired.
You wouldn’t treat magazine advertising or the opening of your physical store as work in progress, and you shouldn’t with your website either. You don’t need to be a perfectionist as there’s always room for review and improvement, and no software is perfect. But you shouldn’t rush going live until you have tested the end customer experience. Many customers will give you only seconds to make up their mind about your site, and only one chance get it right. We are of the opinion that you are usually better off setting yourself a “go live” plan, working towards a particular deadline, and ensuring you are as ready to go as possible by that date – before promoting and advertising your site.
Most customers can get this done within the first month of receiving their website.
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