e-Commerce Ascension Series: Debug & Deploy (VI)

So, your e-Commerce idea is finally coming together into a functional website. Congratulations! You made your vision come true, and now you are one step away from the live launch. How awesome is that? The last quality assurance checkpoint is to open the website to a small set of individuals, the clients, or a sample of loyal customers, to gather feedback from the most important stakeholder: the customer.

Open Testing

We debut the debug & deploy phase by having what the software developer industry calls “Open Testing”. As I mentioned before, a few selected users get to experience the website for the very first time. This is crucial because the e-Commerce website owner and the developers may be biased because they know how the website works and what each functionality implies. Still, the customers don’t need to know, and they don’t care about these aspects. They want an easy-to-navigate, nice-looking, and functional website that sells what they are willing to purchase. Their feedback is crucial because it allows for last-minute changes to the website to accommodate the client’s preferences. If the changes cannot be made in time for the set launch, the stakeholders can decide to postpone the launch. After all, you want the big launch to be on-point.

Bug Fixing

The second step is what defines the Software Development industry: Bug Fixing. The developers gather all the reported bugs and start tinkering with them until they find a solution. Often the main differentiator of a skilled developer is the efficiency with which they tackle these bugs. Even though the code should be made in such a way that developers who work on other developers’ code can read and understand it, it is usually recommended to have the same developers work on the code to avoid time losses due to understanding what the previous developer’s train of thought was.

Deploy Phase

When everything works perfectly on the staging server, it is time to move to the deployment phase. This involves moving the project to a live server. But what type of server should you choose? There are many options, and the Web Development agency should help you make an informed decision because the server’s infrastructure is a crucial component of your project.

Analytics, Tracking & Migration

Last but not least, the developers should set up the monitoring tools used to track your website performance. This will allow the owner to gain powerful insight into how their business performs (check out our article about Data-Driven Decisions).

Additionally, it is always helpful to discuss website migration methodologies with your developers if you decide you want to switch to a different domain. If you don’t hate your SEO wizard, have this discussion with the developers.

Congratulations! Your website is now ready to go live!

If you enjoyed this article about the Debug & Deploy for a website, all the other steps of the e-Commerce Ascension™ become way more accessible. The template is not just a powerful tool to increase your e-Commerce performance. It’s a mindset that allows people like you and me to gaze through the lens of consumer behavior and successfully apply the insight gathered.