Kill the Website Relaunch!

Website relaunch. Two of the most terrifying words in all of marketing.

I am extremely passionate about this topic. I’ve worked with thousands of website teams and personally suffered through hundreds of relaunches. They are time-consuming, budget-depleting, all-encompassing efforts that inflate expectations but often fall flat in terms of results. They can leave wreckage in their wake: burnt out teams, reduced credibility and sometimes even empty chairs around the table. I know there’s a better way—the agile way.

Companies that win at digital marketing don’t bet all of their budget on a mythical two- or three-year website relaunch project. They work as product teams: align on goals, and then iterate their website weekly, with focus. This is how Tableau grew its business by 4x to $1 billion in five years, and how the ACLU raised more money ($24 million) in 48 hours than it did in the prior seven years combined.

These teams take the agile approach from modern software development and the cross-functional culture of DevOps, and apply them specifically to the website. These practices are proven to help teams break out of the stakeholder deadlocks and Gantt chart hell that typify a relaunch slog. But more important than just optimizing process, they enable web teams to really own and drive results. This is something we call WebOps.

I recently presented “Kill the Website Relaunch!” at the Digital Summit in Washington D.C. Watch the recording of my session now: 

Breaking the cycle is hard, so be sure to check out our new How to Kill the Website Relaunch ebook to learn more about WebOps, and how Pantheon can help your team start working in a more agile way. High tempo, efficient, data-driven and results-centric launches are yours, if you want them.