March 30, 2016
Here is part 2 of the steps to take to ensure the successful launch of a Sitecore website.
March 30, 2016
Here is part 2 of the steps to take to ensure the successful launch of a Sitecore website.
My colleague and fellow MVP Jason St-Cyr listed 9 critical items to plan when launching a Sitecore website. With Sitecore 8 and its marketing features, there are some additional steps to consider in order to get the most out of your platform out of the gate.
a. If you are a Sitecore xDB Cloud Edition customer, your sizing would be pre-calculated to determine subscription level
b. If you are hosting Mongo on-premise, you will need to ensure your infrastructure is up to the task. Refer to our whitepaper Planning Your Sitecore xDB Infrastructure for further detail on what to do.
In addition, we recommend double-checking your most important content pages:
If you’re still in a UAT phase with capacity for fixes, do a quick review of pages where personalization and testing will be valuable if you haven’t already planned an optimization roadmap. A simple list might include your homepage, your top 5 landing pages, and your macro conversion pages and forms. (Analysis should be done post-launch to assess traffic volume and bounce rate to further uncover optimization zones).
Your ability to glean insight from your analytics technology relies on tagging of content, events and interactions beyond the standard pageview. For both Sitecore XP and Google Analytics, a small upfront investment will let you quickly report on how the new website is performing, tying directly to conversion points and visitor engagement.
Our recommendations for Sitecore XP data enrichment quick wins are outlined here. We also recommend configuring a basic set of goals in Google Analytics for your top 3-5 macro conversion points.
Finally, your ability to report on website performance improvements requires a comparison to prior performance. If you are launching an updated or redesigned version of an existing web property, be sure you can compare apples to apples.
You should also schedule for 1, 2 and 3 month reviews post-launch to review how these KPIs are performing.