Lately, I’ve been talking to a lot of dreamers. People with big ideas, and that’s great — but I find myself advocating for a just-get-started approach. Have big dreams? Keep ’em alive, and keep building on them. This country is built on people willing to dream.
But start small. On the Web, you don’t have to do it all at once. (Unless you’ve got venture capital waiting to be spent, in which case you should contact me immediately for assistance!) Starting small provides a number of key advantages:
- Something is better than nothing. Don’t go out with a badly-designed site or one that reflects poorly on your business — but get something out there, even if it’s just a Home Page with an e-mail address.
- Search engine rankings take time. If you want to be found online through search engines, your strategy should start today, because you’ll want to evaluate its effectiveness in about three months. In order to get started, you need a site to be found…
- Plans change. Part of my job as a consultant is to help explain how doing business on the Web differs from traditional customer contact, but even so, if you solicit feedback on your (small) site, you’ll learn much about your customers’ online needs and wishes. If you grow your site in stages, that feedback can inform future enhancements — providing a better customer experience, more sales conversions, improved relationships, etc. All good stuff. If you launched your mega-site all at once and then found out that customers don’t care about the syndicated news feed you spent time and effort integrating, not only have you wasted time and money, but your grand vision site has a crack in it, and that’s difficult to fix. Plus, where’s the energy — or the budget — to fix a problem like that?
- Declare victory. Celebrate that first launch. Celebrate the next one, too, and the one after that. It keeps the team engaged, gives you an excuse to send out more news releases or updates to your clients, and creates positive buzz — you’re going places. Never underestimate the power of positive news.
Listen: I’d love to write a contract for $30,000 to implement your grand vision if you really want. Some of my competitors won’t even talk to you for less than that. But you’ll be better served starting with good planning and a starter site that can be up faster. Now get to work.