Soft Launch

Learn why we recommend soft launches when organizations first go live on Novi AMS.

What is a soft launch?

A soft launch gives your team a week to test-drive your new Novi website or portal before opening it to your entire membership. Your site is live on your own domain, but you hold off on announcing it widely. Instead, you let a small group from your leadership team create accounts and explore the site and allow a small number members to discover the new site organically. This gives you time to work out any adjustments before your full membership arrives.

To implement a soft launch, do not communicate a specific launch date to members leading up to your scheduled Novi launch and skip the mass email to members right after you complete the launch process with Novi. Have a few key people from your leadership team spend that week testing the member experience like account creation, navigation, event registration, whatever matters most to your workflow. You’ll catch things that need tweaking before they affect your broader community, and you’ll feel more confident on your full launch day.

Once you are comfortable with your live site, you may send out communications about the new site to as many members as you'd like.

To be clear, your website will be live for anyone who comes across it to see once launch has completed. No big deal if a member comes across the new site on their own during this soft launch period.

As a side note that enhances the importance of a soft launch, with the general nature of the Internet and DNS, newly launched sites may appear immediately for some users, but take 24-48 hours to appear for others. This is a normal part of launching a new website, but you wouldn't want to invite users to the site who won't be able to see it yet.