Should I wait until everything is perfect?

Howdy. Hope you weekend has gone well so far.

Mine has been quite dull.

• I’ve almost finished my first e-book.
• I wrote up a Case Study on the survey.
• I wrote up a Case Study on a pitch we made for a job.
• I’ve been going over the changes to be made to the site.

I’ll be adding all that stuff over the next few days.

But it’s the last thing there – “I’ve been going over the changes to be made to the site” – that I’ll focus on here.

In the marketing of our businesses (yours and mine) it can sometimes be a Catch 22 situation.

Should I wait until everything is perfect?

1. We don’t want to release our product until they’re perfect.

2. But our products can’t be perfect until we’ve had plenty of people use them and provide feedback.

That’s a situation very common for IT people – software version 1 is released. Feedback is provided. Then out comes version 2. And on goes the process.

But adapting that technique can be next to impossible for many other businesses.

After all, you probably wouldn’t be keen to buy a car from a manufacturer who says “It’s an okay car. But we need people to test it out and find out what’s wrong with it so we can make it better for the next model.”

But we can all learn something

Maybe the lesson is that we need to utilise extensive usability testing of our product.

Maybe we need to see if the market wants the product we are developing before we develop it.

Different industries use different business models. Examine unrelated industries and see how you can apply their thinking to your business. Every little bit helps.