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Picking a launch date for your brand new or remodelled website is often a random choice. There shouldn’t be a right or wrong time to launch your shiny new site, right? Wrong.

When launching something as crucial as the landing page for your entire company, you want to make sure that there’s no room for error. Launch day should be an exciting time with eyes fixed on your site watching new visitors come pouring in, yet over and over again we’ve seen people insist on launching on a Friday.  Here’s a few reasons why you should never launch your website on a Friday.

 

Web Developer Availability:

When launching a website, unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as pressing a bit red button titled ‘launch’ and then everything is live. Site launches can often last for many hours with a large number of tasks to complete before the website is available to the public. For example, DNS updates, email checks, navigation tests and other features that need to be properly looked over before people can access the site. 

Depending on how complex your website is, your launch can sometimes run over a single working day which, if you’re launching on a Friday, takes you into the weekend when web developers aren’t usually working. 

Similarly, your web development team will need to be on hand to supervise the launch and iron out any issues. If your team is working externally, even in different time zones – launching on Friday can create problems. For example, if your team is based in the US or Canada, they won’t have arrived at work yet and in contrast, Asian based teams would have left for the weekend at the exact moment you need them. 

If you have an internal web development team you may have to schedule your staff to be on call on Friday evening and over the weekend which could be an added cost that you haven’t factored in. 

 

What day is the best to launch?

As we’ve mentioned previously, launching on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday is a bad time to launch as web developer availability will be lower during the weekend than on weekdays.  So when is the best day to launch your website?

Research suggests that Tuesday is the best day to launch as the people who are working on your website will be well rested from the weekend and they would have already had a day in the office to prepare for your launch. They’d also have 3 full working days to iron out any teething problems. 

Other good days to consider are Wednesday, as your team will have plenty of time to prepare for the launch with two key working days to make sure nothing goes wrong. Monday is also a good option as you have the whole week ahead to fix bugs. 

 

As you can see, there’s plenty to think about, but proper planning around your launch will help tremendously. If you’d like to make use of our decades of experience to help you make more informed decisions, please don’t hesitate to get in contact.

Enjoy your launch day!