We recently had a little workshop on Agora’s product launch. We hadn’t really given it any thought as we were knee-deep with designing the tool. So we took the time to ask ourselves those important questions that anyone who wants to launch a new product into the market needs to:

• What brings someone to [Your Product]?
• What makes a first-time visitor actually try [Your Product]?
• And what will make the same visitor return and reuse [Your Product]?

To answer these questions we broke-down the launching process into four steps and generated ideas for touch-points, for each step:

1. Decide: How might we make people aware of Agora’s existence? Which communication channels should we use both online and offline? What is the role of SMart and Central? What is the message we want to communicate? What materials do we still need to create (e.g newsletter template, copy)
2. Get: How might we tease and attract people to visit Agora? How do we attract users that are not using the old Agora may not even know SMart.
3. Start: How might we convince people to actually start using Agora for the first time? How do we ensure that we do not loose users with a new designed tool?
4. Use: How might we convince first time visitors to come back again and again?

The workshop may not have answered all these questions but certainly established that a perfectly designed tool that no one knows about or that nobody uses does not work. Designing an effective tool required a clear launch plan and communication strategy will be essential to the success of the tool.