So Your Website Or App Is Live… Now What?

 The biggest mistake you can make in UX design is to launch a website or app and then walk away. Monitoring and improving after launch will benefit users and your metrics. Nothing will bring bigger gains.

Whether you’ve launched a redesign of your website or rolled out a new feature in your app, that is the point where people normally move on to the next project. But, that is a mistake.

It’s only once a site, app, or feature goes live that we get to see actual users interacting with it in a completely natural way. It’s only then that we know if it has succeeded or failed.

Not that things are ever that black and white. Even if it does seem successful, there’s always room for improvement. This is particularly true with conversion rate optimization. Even small tweaks can lead to significant increases in revenue, leads, or other key metrics.

Failing that, don’t be afraid to use friends and family as in most cases getting the exact demographic is less important than you might think. As long as people have comparable physical and cognitive abilities, you shouldn’t have a problem. The only exception is if the content of your website or app is highly specialized.

That said, I would avoid using anybody who works for the organization. They will inevitably be institutionalized and unable to provide unbiased feedback.

Whatever approach you use to test your solution, once you’re happy, you can push that change live for all users. But, your work is still not done.

Rinse And Repeat

Once you’ve solved one issue, return to your analytics. Find the next biggest problem. Repeat the whole process. As you fix some problems, more will become apparent, and so you’ll quickly find yourself with an ongoing program of improvements that can be made.

The more you carry out this kind of work, the more the benefits will become obvious. You will gradually see improvements in metrics like engagement, conversion, and user satisfaction. You can use these metrics to make the case to management for ongoing optimization. This is better than the trap of releasing feature after feature with no regard for their performance.