“Perfect is the enemy of the good.” ~Voltaire

If you have an unlimited budget and no deadline to meet you are far worse off than your startup competitor or most other companies competing with you. You probably have time to wait until everything is perfect and all new ideas are vetted before they are added to your website plan. Meanwhile, other companies in your space have updated their website multiple times and have furthered their strategy. If you’re waiting on the latest consultant you’ve engaged to reveal your strategy – you’ve already lost the race.

I’m in the business of providing creative/technical solutions. I’ve always done best as the underdog simply because I knew the resources available and that the competition had more.

Many companies follow a boom-bust cycle of rebuilding and replacing their website every few years. During the off-years the website is on cruise control. No iterative development and minimal content updates. If you follow this strategy you are guaranteed to be off-message and behind cycle 66% of the time: The year that you do nothing, plus the year that you spend rebuilding your website. In other words, your website is relevant only ~1 out of every ~3 years!

A far better strategy is one of continuous improvement and iterative development; keeping your website current and fresh on a regular basis. You need to own your web strategy and identify the next area of your website to refine, as part of an overarching strategy.

For long-term strategy, one process that works is to make a picture of the end-game – what you want the website or process to ultimately look like. Envision that picture as a jig-saw puzzle. Then tackle the most beneficial puzzle piece or set of pieces that will yield the maximum return for the time invested. Granted, you need to have a website foundation first that you can build upon.

If you’re website is not top-of-mind every day, you are losing ground on a daily basis!