What To Expect On Your Nyla Launch Day

Everything you need to know about launch as a Site Manager.

Congratulations on your upcoming Nyla launch! You've been hard at work during onboarding, and now your site is ready to go live. Here are 8 things to expect on and around launch day.

1. There is no need for you to be online for launch.

Our team will point your DNS settings to your Nyla instance at 7a EST unless otherwise specified. (Any changes to this time need to be confirmed, in writing, a week prior to launch.) This switchover happens quickly and anticlimactically, however, due to the nature of the transition, we recommend against checking your website within 30 minutes before or after launch time.

The reason for this is technical: DNS records are stored in multiple layers (your ISP, your own router, your operating system, your browser, etc.) and refreshing your store multiple times during the time of a switchover can, in rare cases, make you see issues that aren’t reflective of what your users see, as any of those layers can keep the previous values for longer. This is not the browsing behavior real users have, which would mostly either visit the previous website or the Nyla site already functioning.

2. You might see the old version of your site.

As a frequent visitor to your own website, the site will be cached in your browser. Visiting your URL for up to 24h post launch might load a cached version of your previous website. This is a rare occurrence and limited to extremely frequent visitors, generally limited to site managers and brand employees, and rarely extending to even your most frequent customers or site visitors.

You can see the most current version of your site in an incognito window, or by clearing your cache and restarting your browser.

3. Downtime is usually too short to notice.

90% of launches complete with less than 3 minutes of downtime at the scheduled launch time. Depending on your DNS provider and what the lowest TTL they support is, downtime can sometimes practically expand to 10 minutes, although the theoretical limit can be up to 60 minutes. This is why we schedule launches during off-hours, to minimize any disruption on real customer traffic, and why we recommend using DNS providers that support very low TTL values.

If you’re seeing any error within the first hour after a scheduled launch and are unsure of if it's due to downtime or not, check your website on a different browser, on your phone using 4G, or ask if your colleagues are also seeing it on their devices. If so, you can usually flush DNS cache by restarting your router and/or your device or just waiting a few more minutes.

Usually ~1-2 hours after launch depending on the TTL value, the domains are finally disconnected from Shopify. Note that until then, the Shopify Admin might display some warnings that you shouldn't worry about.

4. If anything prevents us from launching, your store will remain functional.

In the rare event that anything (i.e. issues on your DNS provider, issues on Shopify, partial outages on upstream large infrastructure providers, etc.) prevents us from having a successful launch, Nyla will ensure your site remains pointed to its previous provider and message you within an hour of scheduled launch time to schedule a new launch date.

5. Expect 24-48h for your analytics to normalize.

Due to the nature of changing DNS settings to point to your new Nyla site at launch, both GA4 and Shopify Analytics may be affected for up to 48h post launch. This is normal and to be expected. After the initial 24-48h, your GA4 and Shopify Analytics will normalize.

6. ...Except for a limited number of Shopify metrics.

The only metrics that will be affected post-launch are Shopify's Add To Cart and Order Conversion Data. This is due to limitations from Shopify passing this data back through Nyla. Add To Cart data will continue to be recorded and accessible within GA4.

Learn more about how Nyla sets up analytics during onboarding here, how analytics are tracked on Nyla sites here, and about Shopify Analytics here.

WHAT'S NEXT?

You're live-- congratulations!

Customer Success will reach out to schedule a post-launch workshop to run through your immediate site management plans (product launches, collection launches, sales, etc) and make sure you're prepped with training and info.

7. For questions and support, reach out to Nyla Support.

You'll use the Nyla Concierge chat window, located at the blue icon in the bottom right of the Editor. Chat is staffed by the Nyla team 9a-5p EST.
If you need help outside of those hours business hours, you can either
- type your question into the same chat window
- OR email support@nyla.app

Either of these methods will file a ticket that a Nyla concierge will reply to during the next business day. Please be sure to include as much information as possible if you submit an inquiry this way; let us know what page you're referring to, what should be happening, what is happening, and ideally include a screen grab image or preferably a screen recording so we can clearly identify what you're sharing.

8. For new or post-launch projects, reach out to Nyla Experts.

Nyla Experts are your resource for post-launch assistance with design requests or new projects. They are freelance Nyla builders who can bring your ideas to life for pre-negotiated, low hourly rates available to Nyla customers a la carte.

Please reach out to Support for an introduction to Nyla Experts, or if you already have their contact information, feel free to reach out to them directly. You'll keep partners@nyla.app cc'ed for visibility and support, but the entirety of your project, from scoping to implementation to billing, will be managed by your independent Nyla Experts.