In fact the search for perfection might just be more detrimental to your website than anything else.

That homepage that your designer has been tweaking for weeks, stop fiddling and make it live. That ebook you’re still perfecting, launch it now. If you have doubts, test it.

In the web world we are lucky to have a friend: instant feedback. Feedback in the form of customers, analytics, surveys, etc. If you were developing a tangible product or print material, you don’t have this luxury. You have to get it right the first time. There is no excuse for a typo on the front of your catalog or a defect on your product. But a website is a living, breathing, evolving creature. Problems can be fixed. Inefficiencies can be optimized.

This isn’t an excuse for sloppiness, but rather a call for constant forward motion. As Seth Godin would say, just ship it. Nothing is more discouraging or counter productive then a long, drawn out website redesign process or new feature project.

Don’t sacrifice progress on the alter of perfection.

404 pages. 500 errors. High bounce landing pages. A low open rate on a marketing email. I’m going to suggest a radical solution to these problems: ignore them.

Why should you ignore them? Because sometimes fixing a failure isn’t the best use of your time. That new landing page with a 70% bounce rate, maybe you can optimize it down to 50%, but it still sucks. Maybe you can increase sales on that failing product 50%, but it still isn’t going to make a dent on your top line.

Instead, flip the coin around. Forget what isn’t working, and focus instead on what is working. The landing page with a whopping 10% conversion rate. Or maybe a breakout product that you can’t keep in-stock. Ask yourself, how can I copy these successes?

Next week, try being a copy-cat, not a problem solver. Let me know how it goes.

If your answer is “no”, than you’ve successfully commoditized yourself.

If you’re truly passionate about your business, your site should be overflowing with content and community, both of which should be natural by-products of your real products. Content and community will endure, even if your products were gone.

What if, instead of your products being the main thing, they were actually souvenirs of a greater movement, idea, or lifestyle?

• Packing lists/invoices – Most packing slips are cold and formal. What if the person who picked and packed the order took an extra 10 seconds to write “thank you [customer name]” and sign their name with a red marker?
• Email notifications – Most shipping and order confirmation emails look like the digital equivalent of vomit. What if you added pictures of your staff and answered common questions regarding shipping and returns? What if you made it send from an actual person, instead of “donotreply@company.com”?
• Outgoing phone calls – Why is it that customers always call us first? Why do we so rarely go on the offensive with our customer service?  Try surprising your first-time or long-time customers with a quick call to just say “thanks.”
• The receipt page – There’s so much you can do with your thank you page. Don’t waste it with a generic thank you message and an order number.

The goal of each touchpoint should be the opportunity for another. Are you leveraging them for all they’re worth?