Image Copyright Steve Jurvetson
Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.
Remember that.
Really, remember that.
Planning is time-consuming. Fixing problems that don’t yet exist is costly, and all too often wasteful. But in the rare circumstance that you have the opportunity: build it to last, don’t build it knowing you’ll have to replace it in the near future. Frequently, there’s not much time for effective planning. We have to move. We have to execute. Now. Fix it later when it’s actually a problem.
Solving Problems Before They’re Problems
I get it – reality intervenes and other things come up and prioritization has to occur. But constantly winging it is not a strategy. Duct-tape and Band-Aids now means major surgery later, in my experience. As soon as we set out to climb some huge mountains in 2012, I knew I’d need a solid plan. Not a rigid one. But well-designed. We can’t afford much time for hesitation or back-and-forth debating – decisions need to be made quickly. But the price of screwing up on the road to a million monthly pageviews is high, and I don’t have time for missteps. Looking ahead now is going to mitigate future headaches.
I obsess over functionality and audience experience.
Now, don’t misunderstand – I’m a terrible graphic designer. Making things pretty is not my forté. But making things functional and smooth is something I stay up late agonizing over. This site is not going to reach 1 million monthly pageviews with a crappy audience experience. If you can’t read this site, and more importantly share every post easily, we’re dead in the water.
Just How Obsessed?
Creating a better, frictionless audience experience has been a series of intentional, planned decisions from the minute I decided to go for the million.
- The decision to have dynamic content all over the site is deliberate
- The decision to have a pre-populated Twitter box at the end of every post is deliberate
- The decision to get rid of standard commenting systems in favor of using Facebook comments is deliberate
- The decision to have polls in posts is deliberate
- The decision to have a bright orange bar at the top of the screen is deliberate
Every bit of functionality added to (and removed from) this site over the past weeks has been pondered and weighed.
Every bit of functionality added to this site over the past weeks has made it bloated and slow.
And a slow site is not a site you will want to read, or one you’ll want to share with anyone. All of those decisions to reduce friction for your reading and sharing experience added up to long load times.
Take a Slow Site, and Make it Faster
Now, what if I weren’t planning for the site to reach a million pageviews in a month? I wouldn’t be concerned about the performance. I could leave it slow. Bloated. I wouldn’t be agonizing over reducing barriers to interact with you and enable easier sharing. I’d somehow get halfway to a million monthly pageviews and plateau (or taper off) – and have to go back and waste time fixing a problem that I could have easily foreseen.
As we discussed at the outset: I can’t afford those kinds of mistakes.
So I set to work tonight learning about how to make a website faster. I caught up on file compression and caching and other tools that will make every post just work for you. I don’t want the load times to be noticeable. I don’t want the customized sidebars and footers to be noticeable. I want you to come here and read and interact because it’s all right at your fingertips without any distractions.
Now, the site is faster. I hope you notice. :)
Through the end of the year I’ll be playing with the design and layout. One big item to resolve is the color scheme here. I like minimalism, but this color palette is not working for me. I spent the weekend looking at color palettes – it was a surprisingly fun experience and I’m looking forward to what a simple coat of paint will do for the mood here.
Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
Now, let’s go get some more people seeing this! {Tweet this Post}