Recently a friend of mine who is a branding expert visited this site. I asked for her feedback. She had lot’s of good things to say about the information and help that the site offered to entrepreneurs just like her; but she thought the overall branding and image needed some work.
She quickly rattled off a list of 5 or 6 things that would improve the overall look and feel. And she noted her surprise that I would launch the site without having some of these items in place.
At that point I stopped her and asked… Are you telling me that the look and feel is so bad that you would not stay on the site? Ohhhh no she said, I’m just saying that it could be so much better. Your material is terrific and I think that a few tweaks around branding and image would make it fantastic.
The 80/20 Rule
I shared with her that I practice the 80/20 rule on every site that I create and run. My goal is always to get the most important aspect of the site up and running as fast as I can. And true to Pareto’s brilliant insight, that means getting about 80% of the key features online…which takes about 20% of the time.
If I tried to launch a site that was 100% one of two things would happen; the additional 20% would take over my days and the site would die in the process of trying to reach 100% or the time lost in getting it to 100% would make the site and content outdated before it ever made its World Wide Web debut!
In the case of the Women’s iBusiness Journal, it’s the content that matters. So launching a simple site that lets me write articles and share information was much more important than, spending the additional time it takes to tweak every aspect of logo and banner design, website color and other aspects of the look and feel.
Money In, Money Out
In addition to speed, following the 80/20 rule to a website launch has other benefits that are important to entrepreneurs. The most significant being money in…money out!
Following the 80/20 rule lets you get your site launched faster so you can start positioning it to help with your marketing and sales…more money in.
On the flip side launching at 80% complete gives you room to play with the remaining 20% of your finished site. You learn what else really matters to your customers and prospects as well as to you. So the enhancements that you make will have a bigger impact and you only pay for them once…less money out!
What do you think?
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