We are just about to relaunch one of our sites It is:
1. 3 years old
2. PR4 (dmoz, yahoo and a few authority links)
3. 1,500 pages indexed in G
4. Fairly good rankings for its money phrases – esp deep content pages
We have identified the site as having great potential. It is just unloved at present.
To this end we are about to relaunch on a new platform with a new technology, new design. Very pretty.
Much of the content will stay the same … however:
1. the new navigation structure will double the amount of pages (as there is too much content on individual pages at present we are splitting it)
2. all the existing urls will be removed, replaced with new dynamic urls
I havent launched, or even relaunched a site in 3 years up until 3 months ago – as we have been too busy refining current ones. However my experience of the last 2 sites we launched, which are trapped in the desert / deep freeze good and proper, has set off warning bells.
How do we approach the relaunch of this site. We cant afford to trip any warning signals, but on the other hand we have to relaunch, the new site will be far more effective and convert visitors to buyers far more effectively?
What is the best approach?
1.Slow gradual roll out?
2.Immediate “big bang” launch
We prefer the 2nd option for other marketing reasons, we are planning a press launch, offline ads etc - we expect the site to be a market leader. But this would be put on ice if we went for a slow relaunch.
Really scratching my head on this one. Put loads of effort into the last 2 sites launched (all in completely different sectors too), don’t want another one to suffer same fate.
Really grateful for any experience / advice shared. Read so many threads on this sandbox thingy, but there seems to be little consensus on this particular problem.
