Launch Phase
Prepare your staged site for successful launch
In the launch phase, you’ll prepare the technical aspects and content of your staged site for a smooth transition to public launch.
- Standards check: You’ll make sure the new site meets all security, performance and accessibility standards for the web, as well as the UT Health San Antonio legal and digital communications standards.
- Analytics tracking: You’ll configure the site in Google Analytics to make sure you’re set up to track the data you want to measure against later, to determine whether the new site is performing according to the goals you identified in the discovery phase.
- Customize: You’ll plan to integrate new or transition existing third-party services so the site will function properly.
- Testing: Your team will perform a quality assurance (QA) check and browser testing to make sure all the links, content, and functionalities are in place and display properly before launch.
Objectives
Work done during the launch phase will help you:
- set up baseline analytics to measure future site performance against
- launch a product that’s accessible for all users
- make sure the site complies with UT Health San Antonio legal, security, and design standards
- identify potential problem points for migration, like forms, hard-coded links, and integrated third-party services
The Team
This phase will involve a small team of specialists from the Web Initiatives team, IT managers, content specialists, and the unit’s main contact for the project.
Timeline
The project team should plan to leave 2 weeks before the targeted launch date for QA testing and preparations.
Outputs
To optimize and preserve search engine ratings:
- 301 redirects mapping existing URLs to new ones
- updated XML sitemap for search engines
Launch Without Fear: A Guide To Site Launches
To make sure users can access and load the new site design effectively:
- updated time to launch (TTL) caching
- internal DNS server updates
- a plan for traffic management and optimizing page load times