33 hours – that’s how long it took me to re-write the majority of the sales content on my consultancy website, replace every image and lay it all out as working web pages.
Now either you are very impressed by that or absolutely horrified that I threw together a website with such abandon. But I don’t tell you this for your approval or disapproval, but rather to make a point. In fact several.
We Are Our Own Worst Enemy
First, I think many of us are our own worst enemy when it comes to our websites, especially those of us who work professionally in the sector.
We second guess every paragraph, every image choice, every layout decision. We write and rewrite. We endlessly tweak and change things until we are paralyzed with indecision. Progress grinds to a halt and we never get anything out of the door.
People often comment on how prolific I am. How much I write, speak and how fast I turn around work. The secret is simple. I settle for good enough.
Don’t misunderstand me. I feel the pain of imperfection too. It is crippling, especially when I know that people like you will be looking at my work. But we have to let go of this mindset if we want to make an impact.
And, for me at least, the key to that is remembering the very nature of the web.
We Forget the Nature of the Web
Our website is not print. We can change it once it goes live. In fact, we should change it. There is a lot on my new website that I hate. I mean, really hate. But I let it slide to maintain momentum.
I have one simple rule — If it is better than what is currently online, push it live.
It doesn’t even have to be “right” or “done,” (whatever those words mean) it just has to be “better.”
And once the site is live, then the hard work begins. Then you pick through every page, refining, tweaking, improving. That is the very essence of the iterative design process. After all, until it is in the world you don’t really know how users are going to respond to it. Sure, you can do some testing if you have the time and budget. But nothing beats seeing people interacting with content in a completely natural way.
Of course, there are some things we cannot put into the world without triple checking. Content that would be harmful either to the user or to the company behind the site. But generally speaking we need to be much more comfortable pushing updates live despite our misgivings.
But the speed of updating my site wasn’t just down to my laissez-faire attitude towards quality control. It is also to do with scope.
We Try and Do Too Much
I see projects like “updating a website’s content” bloat all of the time. People decide that the design isn’t quite right and so that needs fixing too. Oh yes, and we need a better content management system in place first. And so it goes on. This will kill any project.
The most successful projects are small and self-contained. That is why I encourage people to split website projects down into sub-projects to make them more manageable.
In my case I had already recently rebuilt the website to make better use of WordPress’ block editor. That meant I had all of the components in place to easily put together layouts. Now, could those components be improved. Absolutely! But that wasn’t my immediate aim. That could wait. I was focused on two things; navigation and messaging.
Equally, I wasn’t about to change every post I have written over the last 20 years. That wasn’t worth the effort. It wouldn’t bring in that much new business!
Rightly so, every project should have a scope that defines it. But I would argue we focus too much on what we put in scope, when what we exclude from it is, in many ways, more important.
We need to be disciplined if we ever want to get any project over the line.
Just Do It
I know many of you want to improve your websites, but somehow never get around to it. You start, but grind to a halt. You say it is because you get busy. But is it really or is it that you are trying to do too much all at once and agonizing too much over what you are doing?
The iterative design process teaches us that websites don’t have to be perfect to launch. They just need to be better than before. As Nike would say “Just do it” and get something, anything, out the door.
