How to Build the Perfect Website
If you’re seeking perfection on your website, stop reading this. It doesn’t exist.
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.
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July 7th, 2010 at 7:40 am
I am always looking to improve my website. Once i fix 1 thing, I then notice other things can always be improved. It is an ongoing process.
July 7th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Reminds me of another Godin post I recently read which Seth writes “Surely, you can optimize a website or a blog for traffic. You can optimize ads to make them yield more results…And then, at some point, you realize you’re spending your best energy on optimization, not on creation.”
I sometimes get into that “never-ending cycle of optimization” which can then “become a crutch.” Thanks for the reminder to keep shipping.
Seth Godin – The non-optimized life
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/07/the-nonoptimized-life.html)
July 15th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
I agree totally – I spend every night tweaking my website one way or another – adding a page changing a layout – I think I am addicted – there must be a condition for it!
I must get out more – if left alone I am sure it would perform just as well.
Roger
Magician