I’ve been involved in a number of launches in my time – and I’m not admitting that I’m aged in anyway – but I’ve seen a range of these launches from good to bad both in my own as well as clients I’ve worked with. Each has its own unique process and areas that should be considered but there’s always some fundamentals that have to be looked at when you’re building out a launch.

User experience, information architecture and the actual site content.

You look at those things and you start to think about what you want to accomplish with the traffic and visitors you’re getting on your pages. That can be broken down into three different things: Purchase, Persuasion and Participation

The Process Of Purchasing

The obvious goal of any business online is sales conversion through a site, especially when you’re talking about e-commerce. From the end user perspective, it’s not that simple. You want them to buy as soon as they get there; they’re not even certain they’re going to buy from you at all and in fact they might not have even considered making a purchase.

Purchasing is a process and in order to get that commitment you have to funnel users toward that end. In order to make that funnel work, it needs to be lined with relevant content that will provide value to them in each step of the sales process. Leave gaps, and the customer will get tossed out of the sales funnel

Draw Them In With Persuasion

While in many cases we want to sell something (as often as possible, right?) sometimes the goal we have in mind isn’t necessarily to push traffic through a sales funnel. Often, our goal is to convince the user of a specific opinion, point of view or message. We want to establish some trust and rapport that makes the message believable. This is where we begin defining our brand identity and encourage the user to see things from the perspective of the company – that we can contribute to them something valuable and that we’re more than just a long list of products and services.

Participation Comes From Engagement

The internet represents an exodus away from mainstream media models where a small number of people control what an audience sees. For the web, it’s really not an audience of viewers or listeners it’s an audience of users. The fact that we refer to them as such shows just how interactive the medium is, and the position that business owners should take with their sites and the content within. With the interactivity of the web, we can clearly see that user-generated content and user interaction contribute a great deal to the overall retention of visitors to a site (and their subsequent engagement).

If these three points can be fused together a business owner will begin to see how they form a beneficial, symbiotic relationship with one another. More can be achieved with the whole rather than thinking on the level of “or” and settling only with one of the above points as a goal in itself. Hitting on all of these will help generate a site that transforms into a very dynamic and engaging playing field for visitors.

What you end up with is a multi-dimensional site rather than a flat, single-dimension static page. You’ll be providing users with interactive options that will immerse them in the experience that will help not only convert them to a consumer by the end of the sales funnel but will also effectively brand them for future sales and evangelism.

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