Don't Just Phone it In

This week we're in the midst of relaunching a client's signature course. If you've launched something before, it can be tempting to simply "phone it in" and just do exactly what you did before:

identical graphics
identical copy
identical announcements

Everything identical to the assets in the last launch--just rinse and repeat.

But whenever I relaunch something I evaluate it to see how can I improve it and review any updates on my master launch spreadsheet. For this round we wanted to focus on the following three things:

1. Elevating the visual appeal

You know me. You know that I can't relaunch something without touching the graphics I love a good sales page. My client's previous sales page was okay and I really wanted to step it up a notch.

First, I wanted a new font. Sometimes just changing something as simple as one font can radically change the feel of a page. While browsing the stock sites for ideas, I stumbled across a gorgeous font called Idealist. I layered a few photos to create a gradient, textured effect that I used for pull quotes throughout the page (this is perhaps my favorite part of the page).

I also had to change many of the photos because my client's hair is now drastically different and many of the photos from the previous year were no longer a good fit. I included some newer photos to freshen up the page when it was possible. I prefer using photos from the same shoot on a page so that everything feels cohesive. In this case, I mixed photos from two shoots but we connected the design thoughts with the color gradients.

Once I had created the revamped sales page it was easy to create new promo images for the Instagram Feed and Stories and for the FaceBook banners.

2. Better user experience

I've been diving into how to make my work more accessible. People have different preferences when it comes to consuming content--whether it's audio, video or text. In my training we talked about meeting online accessibility standards (let tell you those were some DRY official documents that no one could understand). And while I'm still in the infancy stages of getting into the heart of what you can do to make your site more accessible, there are few ways we can improve the course experience.

Here's what I'm doing to meet different learning styles:

All videos now include transcripts.
We created content via a private podcast feed using Hello Audio so students can listen to the content on their preferred device.
We are considering close captioning for live Zoom calls (Rev.com has a partnership with Zoom to make this happen).
We used addevent.com to add the live call schedule. This allows students to add all of the live calls to their preferred online calendar with one button click.

What I left unchanged:

If you are on my subscriber list, you may recall my survey a while back around different community platforms. I've been quite impressed by Circle, but decided against using it for this round since the client already had a well-established FaceBook group. Why upset the apple cart when something's already working well?

3. Reduce customer service inquiries

No matter how through the preparation, there will always be customer support. My goal with this round was to keep things as clear as possible and reduce the number of emails that are received.

Here's what I did to reduce confusion

Several weeks prior to re-launch, I distributed an email to current students letting them know about the next round. I needed to give them ample notice that the course would be offline for a short while the platform was being updated. I also wanted to assure them that they didn't need to register again. The bonus? Students responded that they were very excited to do the course over again with a new cohort!
I revamped the on-boarding email so that students receive step-by-step instructions on how to log in, how to join the FaceBook group, the link to add live calls to their calendar, and the dates of the course as soon as they register.
I repeated all of the same info noted in that email on the main login screen for the course. Never worry about repeating instructions too many times!
I created all the emails for each week's module to repeat the Zoom link for the week and included a link to that week's downloadable guide (even though this information is listed inside the member portal, I want to make it easy for students to get the email, click the link and get started).