Summary of New Process
With the launch of your website, the delivery phase – including testing, bug-logging and fixing – comes to its natural end. Hopefully, you will have enjoyed a close and collaborative relationship with the team at SMILE during delivery. If you’ve launched your website and it remains supported by us through one of our support subscriptions – great! We aim to deliver the same level of service moving forward into the future.
| Pre-launch | Post-launch |
| Bug-logging through marker.io | Start a support ticket |
| Reactive changes to scope | Change control / Evolve request |
| Regular progress meetings | Tactical monthly meetings (available as a bolt-on) |
What kind of things should we expect will change and why?
Over of the course of a project’s delivery, deadlines are made, timelines drawn up and hours are planned based on the requirements of the complete package of work. As well as pure design and development, there are a lot of operations hours spent on meetings, reactive correspondence and issue triage.
With the move to hosting and maintenance, a final product has been signed off for launch. Any changes to that product require a more formal structure in order to sign-off and schedule extra work that is no longer covered by the scope of the working project.
Bugs that damage the look and functionality of the site now need to be logged as support tickets for investigation and triage by our Support team. Priority decisions and SLAs come into play. New feature requests and changes to original scope now need to be time and cost estimated by our Operations team. Long-term strategy can be discussed at regular tactical meetings rather than sometimes-weekly check-ins held during delivery.
The process generally becomes less reactive and more deliberate and this is all for the better. The original scope has been realised and we can now make plans to keep the site in good shape while helping it to evolve with clear direction moving forward.
How do I get in touch?
Following a successful launch, the quickest and most convenient way to get in touch with us is via the live chat widget which you can find on the home page of our Help Hub. The advantage of live chat is that our whole operations team has eyes on it. This protects against response delays due to annual leave or meetings.
Can I still email the delivery team?
Yes – you can still email team members you worked with during delivery, but please bear a couple of points in mind.
We now have a dedicated Support team that manages post-project queries so issues can be tracked, prioritised and resolved consistently. Project team members still receive emails, and we’ll help where we can, but we can’t guarantee the same fast turnaround that you enjoyed during active delivery. For anything that requires action, tracking or a timely response, we’ll always direct you to the Service Desk or live chat so it can be handled through the correct support workflow.
Can I still log bugs?
Of course! However, the way that you report problems with your site will change. You may have been using a tool such as marker.io to log bugs with us during the testing phase. While this is a quick and convenient way to record a wave of issues for development attention during testing, it is not practical when issue management is governed by SLAs.
Instead, we ask that you open a support ticket with us. Including as much detail as possible will help us to assign a priority level to your ticket and delegate it out to the right team member efficiently. You can attach supporting evidence such as screen captures or recordings directly via the form. Alternatively, you can use a service such as droplr to host media and link to it in the description.
You can read more about how to write a good support ticket here.
I have ideas for new improvements
If you’d like to formally request a change to the way your site looks or functions, you can submit a change control request with specifications. Our team will endeavour to get back to you within 48 hours with any clarifying questions should they be required. A cost estimate will be sent over to you as soon as the scope is clear.
If you are an Evolve customer, you should also have access to a dedicated request form in your project’s Asana board.
Is this a bug, or a feature request?
This is one of the questions we hear most during the weeks following a project’s completion, and it’s completely normal to be unsure.
Quick guide
- Bug: something that’s broken or behaving incorrectly compared with the agreed design or expected behaviour — for example a form that won’t submit, a page that crashes, missing content, or functionality that used to work but no longer does.
- Feature request / change: a request for new behaviour, an enhancement or a change that wasn’t part of the original scope — for example adding a new content type, changing the layout, or integrating a new third-party service.
What to do
- If it looks like something is broken, open a Service Desk ticket so our Support team can investigate and triage it under the correct SLA.
- If it’s a new idea or a change to scope, submit a Change Control request so Operations can estimate time and cost.
- Not sure? Pick whichever form seems closest or pop onto the Help Hub live chat for a quick, informal steer — we’ll point you to the right route and explain why.
What about meetings?
The ability to regularly catch-up with our clients face-to-face in the midst of the delivery phase is one of the key factors to the successful outcome of our projects. We don’t want to lose sight of that fact moving into the new phase of our work together.
That is why we offer the opportunity to meet on a monthly basis with your Account Manager along with other team members currently involved in work on your site. We call these tactical meetings. They provide the opportunity to check-in on the general health of the site and report on works in progress as well as to plan new features.
Tactical Meetings are available as a bolt-on to your hosting subscription. You can find out about other optional extras such as support issue dashboards and life boat service while building your subscription.
We hope that this article has helped to clarify the change in comms strategy once your site is live. If you have any further questions, please get in touch.