INSIGHTS & PERSPECTIVES
“Really, it’s good enough” vs. “Enough, it’s really good”: Lessons from our website redesign
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Tom Dempster
- Published on
Sometimes, time and emotional investment adds complexity to an otherwise straightforward idea. This article is about the process that led to the redesign of True Boost’s website to coincide with our seventh anniversary; how my thoughts both helped and hindered the project; and the lessons you can apply to your own site redesigns.
Perfection
I took quite a few attempts at writing that opening paragraph. It’s a timely reminder of Voltaire’s line* about “perfect is the enemy of the good”. In other words, it is better to make some progress and be happy with where you’ve ended up, as opposed to striving endlessly for perfection that may never come. “Really, it’s good enough.”
* I’m also reminded about that line being mistranslated. Voltaire’s original quote, “Dit que le mieux est l’ennemi du bien”, actually talks about the best, not the perfect, being the enemy of the good. There is a subtle difference that we will revisit later.
True Boost’s new website went live last week. My mission for our new site was relatively simple – ‘clean it up’. The first iteration of the True Boost website was launched in 2019. While that version of the site served us well, we slowly suffered from all the trappings of a fledgling website – a disjointed site structure, adding superfluous pages, and eventually, a design that started to resonate less with the direction the business was heading in. It was serviceable, but I didn’t want just serviceable. I wanted something much better.
So, just under three years after launch, I was already plotting how to revamp the website to align with my vision. Cleaning it up should have been a straightforward project. Website design and redesign was a core service in the early True Boost years, and for this, I only had to get sign-off and approval from myself. If I wanted to move forward, it was as simple as doing the work we were already doing, but without feedback or input from anyone other than me. What could be easier?
Little did I realize that I would become my own client from hell.
Prioritization
The biggest mistake I made – at least initially – was that I didn’t treat our internal relaunch like a relaunch for one of our partners. When a partner would approach us about web design, we had a consistent and repeatable process in place, from discovery all the way through to launch. I didn’t treat our relaunch in that manner. Instead, my brain was a free-flowing interstate of thoughts and ideas that were competing for space, constantly merging into one another. It meant there was no clarity to the process.
There is also another significant factor that played a part in the prioritization process. It would not paint an accurate picture to not acknowledge its role. Shortly after deciding to press ahead with the redesign, our family underwent a couple of large, traumatic events that totally shifted my priorities inside and outside of work. This shift meant that, for a time, fulfillment of work for our partners became my only priority for True Boost – our growth would have to wait, because there was little bandwidth or appetite to make things more complex. That continued to be my priority in the intervening years.
But, as time passed, the time available to focus on this redesign started to increase. Great news! So what other obstacles could I find, intentionally or otherwise, to impede this project?
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Procrastination
I would have no hesitation about stepping back from a partner relationship if it took them four years to confirm their direction for their website redesign.
Yet, this was the bizarre situation I was facing. The core thing that I had been doing – since even before building True Boost – was designing and building websites. It was not that the project was too difficult. Instead, it was my emotional link and proximity to the project that was causing the problem. Nothing was ever going to be good enough as I tied myself in ever-tightening knots about the direction of this redesign. Four years of thoughts, of reasons, of potential problems swirling in my head. Reworking the messaging, playing around with designs, tinkering for tinkering’s sake. Why couldn’t I just move this forward and get it done?
I looked around and realized I was a long, long way away from ‘clean it up’.
So, what changed? How did I actually move this forward and get it done?
What I realized – probably around June or July of this year, so really not that long ago – is that the strain of not completing this redesign was holding me back in so many ways. Even more importantly, it was holding True Boost back and severely limiting its potential. With every week and month that passed, I was adding another brick in the wall of procrastination. Candidly, I even considered other options earlier this year as I thought about my own direction and what the future looked like for me and for the company. The redesign had become a bind of my own making.
I knew I had to reset the project and forget about the previous four years. I tried to be dispassionate and think about my goals for the website, the design, the flow, the copy, in the same way as I would if I was building this for a partner. Slowly, a plan came together, and as I made progress, it became easier. As I got closer to the finish line, the doubts resurfaced momentarily – it was still difficult to detach entirely. In creative pursuits, you often see it with songwriters who want to find the perfect line to complete a song, or artists who agonize over the finishing touch to a painting. It can be difficult to make that final commitment when you’re so close to the thing you’re working on, with all that time and effort invested into it.
But you have to decide – and when it’s your project, only you can decide – when to say to yourself, “Enough, it’s really good.” That is “really good” by your own standards and your vision for your work, nobody else’s.
Lessons to learn
You should learn the lessons from every project – both good and bad. It’s the only way you can get better. Here are the key points I would advise for anyone embarking on a site redesign.
Define your vision - and stick to it
This is imperative. If you’re redesigning your site, you likely have a vision for what your new website will look like. It can be hard to translate a vision into words, but try and convey what it looks like in two or three sentences. As you move through the phases of the redesign project, constantly refer back to that vision to ensure you are maintaining alignment.
Have a clear project plan and timelines
By its nature, a website redesign can be a big beast, so a clear project plan can help to signpost the key milestones and ensure you stay on track. Adding realistic timescales to each milestone ensures that progress doesn’t stall.
Set some guardrails
It’s fine to test out different concepts – experiments are how we make progress. With that said, you have to put limitations on how long you will spend on these concepts. I spent six months of this redesign project playing with a vertical header that was an interesting idea, but was never likely to make it to the final version.
There will always be compromises
Tradeoffs and compromises are part of life. We don’t get everything we want, whenever we want it. In a website redesign, the tradeoffs are usually time or resource-based, not necessarily the competency or skill of the designer. Accept that there will be compromises and you’ll be entering the redesign with a realistic mindset.
Seek feedback from those whose perspectives you value
Feedback is how we make improvements. It is natural to want to keep parts of the redesign under wraps, and getting too much feedback can also be unhelpful. However, I believe that getting external feedback at all stages of the project process (not just immediately before the site launches!) from a small circle of people you trust can contribute to a more effective final site.
Keep moving forward
In any large project, it’s easy to get stuck. I don’t think you should rush decisions for the sake of it, but at the same time, things have to keep moving forward – so if there is indecision or uncertainty in one aspect of the redesign, put it on ice (but make a note to come back to it…) and focus on another area. Otherwise, the project can become weighed down by a lack of decision-making.
The last word
Four years ago, “clean it up” had a clear message in my mind. We needed more space for our copy to breathe; less clutter so our value and message could be clearly understood; and better site organization so that we could emphasize what I believe it is that we do best. The new True Boost site aligns with my vision.
My takeaway is that doing hard things is, well, hard. The complexity of a project isn’t confined to the nuts and bolts of the task, but it can be influenced by the people involved and how they approach it. Having high standards is a good thing, and wanting to do excellent work is a good thing. But sacrificing everything in pursuit of perfection that you can’t even define means that neither of those good things ever come to fruition.
Voltaire didn’t write about the perfect, but he did write about the best, and realistically that is all you can ever ask of yourself and those around you – to do your best. That’s what I have always done and that’s what True Boost will continue to do, for the next seven years and beyond.
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