Have you ever gotten ready to host a big party, and you run out of time at the end? You forget to put out the candles before guests arrive, or you scrap the fancy charcuterie board? Happens to me all the time. Too many ideas and details, too little time. Luckily, friends never knew I’d planned a spread o’ meats. They are perfectly happy without it, and in their eyes, nothing is lacking.
I hate to break it to you, but your website is like that party. Something’s going to get left behind.
You’ll think you can do it. You’ll plan out elaborate lists of content with optimism. But let’s be honest: Do you have the capacity to develop all that content and flesh out all your ideas?
Some function you thought was critical got abandoned as the launch date loomed closer and closer. Your content will be missing a pertinent thought—possibly inadvertently. Some small animations might get scrapped, or you might even downshift from planned video assets to a still photo. A whole section of the site might even be hidden when you go live.
Guess what? That’s OK.
We recently deployed the soft launch of a new website. If you’re splitting hairs, it’s actually a new brand which has a solely digital presence. Which means we got to develop a super swank logo, as well as the overall aesthetic, tone and marketing plan. Once the brand was established, we dove into the logic that makes the whole website function, while the client focused on developing their highly technical content.
The challenge, as it is with nearly all website development projects, is content. This particular client’s business model required very robust content, deep research, and impeccable accuracy. And that simply takes time to do right. Turns out, more time than they had available. In the end, we launched without an entire section of content.
While that seems disappointing at first, it’s important to know the end user isn’t missing anything. The site still has value to add over time, and from a marketing standpoint, enhancing content further down the road has advantages. The client was wise to make a last-minute decision to stick with a sharper focus and do fewer things well.
The plate, so to speak, was full enough. No one missed the charcuterie board.