Welcome to the Escape Blog

An article at Improve The Web and a client meeting recently inspired me to mention the (perceived) risk involved with web management and SEO.

That’s because, sometimes, a lot of emphasis is put on ‘getting it right first’. Sometimes the word ‘time’ is added to make this dream even more impossible.

The problem is that with many websites the decision of ‘how it should be’ are based on subjective measurements, usually by the management or board, and these tend to be based on personal tastes, not taking into account the more important drivers of success on the web, such as usability, customer experience and user feedback. And, although return on investment is fully understood, personal opinion can get in the way.

What is revealing about this direction of thought is that sometimes, and this is my opinion, so much time and effort is put into “getting it right” based around irrelevant (or no) key performance indicators.

That said, I have had a lesson in e-strategy today, so I have toned down my ‘gun-ho’ opinion slightly.

But, to get a website working overtime, it needs a lot of tender loving care, some great content, and some user feedback and, let’s face it, how often does a CEO actually use the company website? How often do we, as website managers, use our website like a customer?

Risk and Reward

So, with my websites, I tend to go into things like a bull in a China shop and measure and adapt as I go along. Purely as I believe a website needs some aggressive drive and management upfront and during it’s infancy, and doing this on-line is just as effective as doing it off-line, except you get more objective feedback from users.

• Look at Apple: How often do they release products that aren’t quite there yet?
• How many websites (especially so-called web 2.0 projects), do you use that are still in Beta?

Sounds incredibly risky doesn’t it? And, perhaps you may think that this approach wouldn’t work with your business but, there is only one way to find out.

Is a boat with a few holes that can be fixed better than a boat still in the harbour?

My personal opinion is that people learn to love websites based on the value they offer back. It’s a two way relationship. For arguments sake, why not begin to think about this scenario?

1. You build your website (with a strategy in mind) and with a structure that allows for growth.
2. You populate the website with a few pages and upload your sitemap to Google.
3. You get a few incoming links and start attracting some very basic traffic.
4. You add some quality articles and content just to keep the website growing (keeping the strategy in mind).
5. You collect feedback from real users, either basic web statistics, or through more comprehensive feedback mechanisms. Why not go ahead and just ask them? PR schemes may even be appropriate for a core feedback group.
6. You adapt the website accordingly based on the feedback. Plug the holes, changes the pages that don;t work and push the traffic through.
7. You could even start collecting data by including people in the ‘conversation’. The very fact that the website is changing regularly is newsworthy in itself.

The result is that your users end up with the site they want (to a point - you still need to put the strategy to the top of the list). You end up with a more effective website.

I’ll leave you with this final thought. A lot of the most successful websites today didn’t start off being what they are now. They evolved based on user feedback, and that always reminds me of the story of Mr. Wrigley.

So, about me being Gun-Ho……….

Yeeeeeeee haaaaaah……. There’s gold in them there hills if we are quick enough off the mark!