So you’re approaching launch. You have everything in place, and you’ve promised stakeholders the new site or product will go live on a specific date.
Articulate branding guidelines? Check!
Beautiful, user-friendly designs? Check!
Pre- and post-launch marketing strategy? Check!
Great development work? Uh oh.
You find out the development work, the last and crucial piece of the puzzle, is subpar. You may be thinking, “But we’ve invested too much time and money to change the plan now!”
If you launch with bad code, even the most user-friendly design can suffer from:
Bad usability from unexpected behaviors
Poor accessibility
Loss of hard-earned SEO juice
Erosion of brand equity from a buggy experience
Slow growth from brittle code that’s hard to extend.
Most product leaders are not developers themselves. So what is a non-technical product professional to do?
If you haven’t started development, lean on recommendations from people you trust to find and vet partners. Check online reviews, and read the comments to make sure past clients had similar needs. Remember you get what you pay for, so trust your instincts. If something looks too cheap or too fast, that’s your indication something is wrong.
As development begins, plan for regular technical review by an expert not affiliated with your developer. At best, oversight can lead to good discussions about the best coding strategies. At worst, oversight can prevent a bad situation from getting out of hand.
If your launch is approaching and you see signs that the code is not up to standard, stop and address it. Yes, changing your plans will hurt. But the initial discomfort could be less than the pain and cost of owning a poorly built site in the long run.
So be wise about selecting your technical partners, but also be realistic about knowing when to cut your losses before taking ownership of code that will hurt in the long run.