Best time to launch my software?
Our team has been developing a product which we initially wanted to release in early November. Although we are nearing the final stages, private beta testing is continuing to reveal new and annoying bugs. It seems that we may have to push back our launch until sometime in December, however I am not a fan of this due to the downtime of Christmas and New Years holidays.
One of our goals for the launch is to get bloggers in our industry to review our product and I know this will be increasingly difficult with many on holiday at that time.
Should we hold off until early 2011? or release asap even if this means some minor but obvious bugs remain?
The only upside I can see about delaying the launch would be to allow us to Blog more and our site to get more Google Juice.
Thanks in advance.
Tanvir
Launch Products Bloggers Product Launch
2 Answers
Launch today. If your product is usable, and the bugs that remain are for the most part minor, then launch now. If a specific functionality area of your application has many bugs, then maybe disable that area (if that's possible) while you fix most of the bugs.
And be wary of doing big press splash for your product now. You can always do a press launch later on, fx declare your product "1.0" and send out PR for that milestone. Eric Ries has a great post about why not to 'launch'.
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Tanvir, I'll ad my self to the "launch today" mantra. You'll get feedbacks and you'll start collecting users and boosting your stamina as well :-) – Thesp0nge 14 years ago
Actually, I would launch when the product is ready, even in December. On one hand you're right, many people are on vacation in on the other hand, there's going to be less competition for new, so you have a better chance of people noticing you.
In January everyone's going to be back and there'll be a flurry of new products and it'll be harder to stand out.
