Make your marketing website kickoff meeting better using Switchboard

7 tips of making sure you’re running an effective marketing website kickoff meeting

1. The timeline is king. The timeline is your most important document when developing or relaunching a website, but it’s not only about the launch date. Set realistic dates for delivering content and designs, development time, and review/QA periods. Make sure everyone understands what happens to the timelines if a deliverable is missed – some deliverables can run in parallel, but some tasks must happen sequentially.
2. Is everyone here? Marketing may own your website, but it’s likely that IT, Ops, Sales, Product, Customer Success, and Support teams all will be stakeholders. Some you might loop in during specific points – write down when everyone gets looped in and make sure they know in advance when you need their time.
3. Batteries not included. The marketing website kickoff meeting should go over exactly what is included in the scope of your website – the pages, any major features, and any design choices that could influence the development. There shouldn’t be any surprises after this point about what is being delivered on launch.
4. Who wrote this? Though your team may all contribute on pages, a good website sounds like it was written from one voice, so one person needs to be in charge of reviewing any copy and signing off. It’s important to build in enough time for this person to review everything.
5. Loop de loop. Determine how many rounds of revisions you have. No matter how good your designs are, some people won’t be able to visualize the content until they can see it on their own screen, so it’s best to include a chance for people to review copy and images for small edits and suggestions. When you do this, be up front and realistic about what level of changes you can accept without increasing the budget or pushing the launch – an entirely new page design will take more time and effort than a copy tweak.
6. QA is not optional. There will be mistakes, but make sure you’ve got a team of detail-oriented people to go through and help you spot them before the launch. If you have access to them, make sure you test on a wide variety of computers and mobile devices in case things look different on different screen widths or browsers. Give your QA team enough time to be thorough and your developers enough time to make any fixes.
7. Go/No Go. One person needs to have authority to determine whether everything is ready for launch. Determine who on the project team it is and make sure they are able to talk with the project stakeholders to go over any serious concerns.

With these tips, your marketing website kickoff meeting should be all set for success!