New products are hitting the market daily. Did you know that 571 new websites are created every minute? If you’re a new business owner, you’re likely feeling overwhelmed. How are you supposed to reach your target audience when there are hundreds of new websites going up every 60 seconds?
The key to breaking out and reaching consumers is to create a website that puts users first. There are several ways you can prioritize your customers when building your site.
Today, we will explore the benefits of testing your website with a soft launch. The significant differences between a hard and soft launch are that soft launches are contained to a small group, which is often referred to as beta testing. In other words, you have more control over who tests your site.
Let’s look at four ways your customers and small business can benefit from the soft launch of your website.
Squash Bugs Early
The term beta testing goes hand in hand with bug testing. You could have a team of senior developers working on your page, and bugs will still pop up on your site. A soft launch allows you to open your business up for a small group of individuals and will enable them to browse your various pages and forms.
Delivering an excellent user experience requires you to have a business page that is accessible and bug-free. Use this time to stress-test your website to ensure that customers will have a high-quality experience every time they log in.
Build Momentum
The status of your website during the soft launch stage can help you build momentum in the early stages of your business. Consumers are more receptive to a website that’s a work in progress compared to a hard launch that was rushed out to the public.
A soft launch stage will give you time to build interest in your brand, grow your email list, and improve engagement on your social media channels. It’s impossible to run a successful company if you lack leads, brand awareness, and engagement. We believe that the best way to build momentum is by releasing your website in stages.
First, you’ll create a coming soon page for your website. Next, run quality assurance tests in-house to check for website-breaking bugs or glitches. Once you’ve determined that your site looks and functions properly, you’re ready to initiate the soft launch of your website.
Enhance Customer Personas
Customer personas are a big deal to every marketer who hopes to reach their target audience. Essentially, a customer persona is a character sheet that represents your ideal consumer. For instance, if you were the owner of an online pet store, you would want to create customer personas for dog and cat owners individually.
The soft launch stage of your website is an excellent opportunity to learn more about your target audience and create consumer variants. Let’s go back and look at the persona for the dog owner we discussed a few minutes ago. There are different kinds of dogs and thus different human personality types for each type of dog. When you want to refine your customer personas, you should stick to significant categories within the same topic.
Using this process, you can create personas for customers that have big dogs, like great Danes, as well as consumers with smaller dogs like poodles. Use this information to create targeted marketing campaigns and start building segmented lead lists before your official launch.
Gather Feedback
Finally, soft launches allow you to gather feedback on UX and products. Make sure that everyone who participates in your beta completes a customer survey form at the end of their experience.
Compile all of the data from your feedback and look for common data points. For example, if 80 percent of beta testers felt that the checkout process was cumbersome, it’s time to start thinking about redesigning and fine-tuning the process of placing an order.
Similarly, if a large percentage of consumers leave comments saying that they didn’t understand the purpose of a specific product or service, this is a clue that you should go back and flesh out your product information and description, so people understand what they are seeing.
Conclusion
Soft launches are a great way to grow your business if you need some extra time to finish the design or additional feedback. Beta testers can help you find bugs, design flaws, and questionable web copy.
Combine this information with the ability to start gathering leads and boosting engagement, all while building detailed customer personas, and it’s no surprise business owners are catching on and releasing soft launches for their websites and services.
