Your business is on the precipice of launching a new product or service that the entire team has been working on for months. It is finally ready and everyone is excited to have their hard work released on the world. Having used the ASK Method or Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula to set up your launch, you would be all set for the day, having perfectly timed the release of your newsletter, blog posts, and social media campaigns to drive people to your site on the crucial launch day.
In this moment you may feel as though nothing could go wrong, as you have done everything you possibly could do to make this launch a success. Unfortunately, there are some things that are completely out of your business’s control, for example if the web service, server or platform you use suddenly and unexpectedly goes down. Alternatively, the amount of traffic to your site may have caused it to crash.
It sounds like a terrible nightmare, the day that tons of traffic is expected to be brought to your site, you temporarily do not have a site for your customers to go to. However it has happened to other businesses before, and it could happen to you.
When it comes to launches, the ASK Method teaches us to have certain back up plans and strategies in place so that your business is able to quickly pick itself up and move on after it comes across a hurdle. Here are 5 ways in which you should operate and continue with your launch until you are fully operational again.
5 Practices to Implement When You Hit a Hurdle on Launch Day
- Make sure there is someone dedicated to keeping your customers in the loop and updated on the situation through your various social media platforms.
- Do not start to panic about lost time, as the situation was and is completely out of your control, all you can do is your best to make any fixes as soon as you can.
- Make sure your team is working as quickly as they can to get things back online, and then still test the system to make sure it is fully functioning and stable. One test may not be enough. You don’t want your site to go down again so make sure it is 100% ready before you encourage customers to go back to it.
- Once it is all over, post a full explanation on your blog, in your tweets, and send customers an email, which also includes how you’ll be working to prevent such issues in the future.
- Now that it has happened, you never want it to happen again. Begin to re-architect your system to reduce the likelihood of future downtime.