This was originally posted 14 years ago. Opinions, facts and reality may have changed.
My daughter and I stayed at my Mum’s for a couple of days last week; a change of scenery, a time to catch up with friends and relatives, and an opportunity for Grandma to get completely exhausted by her granddaughter.
One thing that hasn’t changed though is the dodgy shower. It’s a new shower, well newer than the one that was there when I lived under the roof, but it suffers from the same problem as its predecessor. No matter where you put the dial, the water’s either freezing cold or hotter than the sun. There’s a sweet spot of about 3 millimetres where the temperature’s just right, and I’d often find myself spending longer trying to find it than actually showering.
During the time we were there I learned to cope with this inconvenience. The shower was “good enough”. It did it’s job, after a fashion and, well, you just learn to accept some things are the way they are don’t you?
How many companies have websites like that? They ‘kinda’ do the job they’re intended for. You have to fight them a little bit sometimes but you get there eventually.
Unlike printed material, a website doesn’t have to remain a moment in time, captured until the next time it’s replaced. A web site is a living, breathing, evolving entity – and constant improvement should be at the heart of any web strategy.
And if your web site is guilty of being “good enough”, you’re likely to lose visits – and income – to sites that recognise the importance of kaizen and are subject to constant improvement.
Imagine your website receives 1000 visitors daily but, for whatever reason, only 100 of them make a purchase (or make a call, request information, whatever your measurement of success is), that’s a 10 per cent conversion rate.
Suppose that spending a little time and money testing variations of your home and product pages raised that conversion rate to 20 per cent (in other words 200 people made a purchase): that’s an increase of 100 per cent. For tweaking a few pages.
And, again, imagine if each customer generates £1000 of value during the lifetime of their custom, those tweaks could generate an extra £100,000.
And that’s from only 1000 visitors a day, which is relatively low in traffic terms.
So, tell me now, are you willing to settle for “good enough” ?