It never ceases to amaze me that when the going gets tough, many people seem to want to make things more complex. Things look difficult, so hey, let’s make them even more so.
In recent times David and I have worked on a number of projects where one could be forgiven for thinking that maybe the original vision had somehow been lost. And something new and megalithic had taken its place.
David is just back from a stint in San Francisco and brought back with him Getting Real from 37 Signals (and an Ipad, but I digress). It’s a gem of a book, full of witticisms that David and I have actually used ourselves (and devised quite independently of the 37 Signals folk) when dealing with prospective clients or people who want us to invest in their grand plan.
One of these witticisms and indeed it’s also a chapter title is “Scale Later”. We’ve been known to say the same thing – you don’t have a scaling problem until you have a huge amount of customers – right now, you have no customers, hence no scaling problem. When you have this problem, that is the time to solve it.
This sort of grand designs paradigm is part of a way of thinking that I call – it must have everything, including the kitchen sink.
Throw out the kitchen sink - keep your new app or online business simple and easy to use.
Interestingly enough, our experience both in consulting and with our Arts Hub and also Screen Hub sites, is that less is more. With Arts Hub we started with way too much stuff – forums, cv uploads, events and all the audience really wanted from us was jobs and news. And they told us so, both in user statistics but also our annual customer surveys. You can find out the full story on how we went about getting rid of most of what was on the Arts Hub site and trimming it down to what was actually wanted in our book Niche Content Millionaire.
Twitter I think works so brilliantly because it doesn’t have the kitchen sink and is a relatively open and simple format with very clear boundaries i.e 140 characters.
So for anyone who’s considering starting a new online venture or writing a new application I’d recommend both reading Getting Real, but also just getting really clear on what you’re doing and sticking to that. Don’t add bells and whistles and forget about the kitchen sink – really, when people use your service or application their patterns of behaviour will tell you what you need to add – and it’s really more likely that what you’ll be doing is taking away instead.
Photo: flickr dOOd
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