So You Want To Launch a Product
Everyone loves thinking about all the features their new software product will have, but many other elements need that same level of attention. I am guilty of missing some of these myself or at least putting them off too long. Here is an incomplete list of the “other stuff” you may need to deal with if you want to launch a product.
- Terms of service
- End-user license agreements
- Payment processing
- Account deletion
- Landing page
- Email service
- Email list/newsletter software
- Advertising budget
- Campaign tracking
- User analytics
- Product KPI tracking
- Bookkeeping for taxes etc.
- Customer support email
- Customer support phone
- Issue tracking
- Regulatory compliance
- Coupons or promotional offer capabilities
- Onboarding or first-time wizards
- In-product help or knowledge base
- Performance instrumentation and alerting
- Disaster recovery
- Data backups
- Account or data migration plans
- Versioning
- Publish update notes
- Cross-browser or cross-device testing
- Referral capabilities
- Launch-week plans
- Social media automation
- Calendar of related trade shows
- Sandbox or demo environment
- Free-trial capabilities
- Contract template for B2B
- Invoicing
- Reports for ongoing capitalization or operational budgets
Not all of these are required on the day you launch, but over time, they will likely pop up as important. Like most things, though, the more you go through the process of launching a product, the more these items become intuitive instead of having to think through them.