5 mistakes to avoid before a product launch
A product release is an important milestone for any organization. However, building a product (let alone launching) is not easy and requires careful planning and execution.
For the launch to go smoothly, product teams should look into the pitfalls we mention, and why they should be avoided, if possible.
1. Not prioritising between features for the launch:
Stick to the bare viable minimum when releasing your product into the wild.
Launching a product with all possible features, that is, going for the quantity, as opposed to a minimum number of high-quality elements can lead to a bloated and possibly harder to use the product.
You’d rather launch with a smaller set of key features and tasks, observe how users use them, and make a more data-based decision into further launches. Going for broke and trying to launch all features and sub-items in a product could just end up wearing out the team, without really drawing the value of these different features.
The key here is prioritization and to some degree a sense of acceptance that product perfection is more of an iterative process.
2. Not defining relevant KPIs early enough + not defining the right kind of KPIs
Product teams should plan to understand their product’s performance indicators well before they launch. Before quantifying through KPIs, one needs to understand that defining the nuances of the KPIs is crucial.
One can analyse many elements, but focusing mainly on the aspects that align with your goals can bring effective change.
Choosing the right KPIs depends on the business goals of your product, and this, in turn, provides the structure for a testing framework to analyse performance and progress.
The testing framework will give an insight into what users like and what the team can further improve. Additionally, finding just the right amount of KPIs is necessary, in a way that it’s enough to get an understanding of performance but not too many to lose focus.
3. Not having content work closely in the design phase:
Every so often, product teams will decouple the relationship between the visual design, experience and content. As innocuous as this may seem, this can be the death of things when it comes to effective design, and at the launch level — making sure content hygiene is in order.
Creating content is a fundamental part of the overall design process. Don’t leave it behind.
Content, in the case of launches also means the kind of peripheral content you would see on the app store, emailers and so on. Making sure these synergies with the product also help for effective launches.
4. Inadequate communication between the teams:
Teams should maintain a rapport, in particular, they must effectively communicate the priority order of tasks amongst themselves. Having everyone on the same page is vital when it comes to building a product.
Everyone needs to understand what you’re building, why you are building it, where to put in the most effort, how long it will take and what roles are being played by each individual in the establishment of this project.
Keeping a finger on the pulse across the board can help teams in working well together, with no unpleasant surprises, particularly the ones that can hinder a launch.
5. Not realising that the real work starts post-launch:
One would think that once the product launch is over, the design process is over alongside. That, however, is not the case. A significant part of the work comes in post-launch.
Teams need to analyse and build inferences based on the insights gained perpetually in order to constantly iterate and make things more usable and hopefully more delightful. Pre-launch testing is all well and good, but there is no source of truth as powerful as real-life user stats.
Always be open to learn and improve the product.
Food for thought
For successful launches, every step requires an amount of precision and execution, but on another level a sense of maturity and acceptance of how product teams move.
Before a product or feature launch, all you can do is plan, research, test, and prepare for every situation.
The Canvs Editorial team comprises of: Editorial Writer and Researcher- Paridhi Agrawal and Anjali Baliga, the Editor’s Desk- Aalhad Joshi and Debprotim Roy, and Content Operations- Abin Rajan
Follow Canvs on Instagram and LinkedIn. Don’t forget to follow us here on Medium as well for more design-related content.
