It’s the opening night of your dream nightclub. You’ve spent months picking out the right shade of pink for the carpet, the perfect umbrellas for your cocktails, the best bulldog statues for the toilets. It cost you every penny you have, but it’s perfect.
You invited everyone you know – of course – and it’s going pretty well. Word of mouth is sure to spread, and in a few weeks you’ll be packed.
If only.
A week passes and your go-go girls outnumber the punters. The few unfortunate deadbeats who do show up leave soon after. In desperation, you gamble what little you have left on a carpet bombing of indiscriminate ads and slash your prices. Having spent your money on the fitting, this is your last, best hope to attract customers.
It doesn’t work.
Turning on the lights, you decide to take one final stroll round, before the bailiff arrives for his keys. With a pained smile, you reflect on what remains of your creation. Looking at it now, was pink a good idea? Maybe the bulldog statues clashed with the neon cherubs? How could I have known?
This is the story of most websites, and the mistakes they make.
Firstly, their new owners spend most or all of their budget on the first build. They should hold as much – or more – back, to allow for promotion and development.
Secondly, they expect to be overnight successes. The expression “if you build it, they will come” is about as truthful as “if you bake it, it will taste good”. It takes time, and hard work to attract people, and your work here is never done.
Thirdly, they assume their original design is set in stone, and are slow to adapt – or don’t adapt at all. The best websites are always improving, measuring everything and refining every slight detail constantly. For your nightclub, you might watch the queues around the bar, and adjust your staffing to match. Are you paying equivalent attention to where your visitors go on your site? Do you know the most and least effective pages, and what have you done to improve them?
Perhaps because a website isn’t a physical ‘thing’, people struggle to see how they work. So if it helps, think of your site like your dream nightclub.
Just avoid the bulldog statues.
