I’ve been asked hundreds of times by prospective clients, “How long does it take to design, develop and launch a website?” In the future, I plan to begin answering their question this way: “It took us 7 years to design, develop and launch our own website, but we can get yours done a lot sooner.”
In 2012, We began designing a new website for Scout Branding. With a lot of excitement we looked for inspiration, made sketches and papered the walls with layouts. It was fun for a day or two, then we got too busy with client work and pretty much forgot about having a new website.
A couple of years later, we created a totally new design for the website and we were optimistic about being able to “knock it out in a week or two.” But what happened is that we struggled to pull together the hundreds of photos, graphics and logo files we would need for the new website. It overwhelmed us and then things got really busy and we dropped the project again.
In all, we probably stopped and started the website project five or six times. This experience has given me more empathy and understanding for prospective clients who call us, having put off redoing their 10-year-old website. I totally get that now. At the same time, I think about the untold number of missed opportunities our janky website cost us. I don’t know how to quantify the loss in revenue, but I’m sure it was a lot.
The key takeaway for me is this:
Don’t let “being busy” keep you from building and optimizing your sales machine. That goes for your website, your branding and your messaging. If you put it off like we did, you look up and seven years has gone by and all you know is that you missed out on a lot of possibilities. That’s the makings of an origin story.
