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This week, I killed one of our signature website design services, a custom-ish strategy process that included some copy, some content strategy, and SEO work, all wrapped up in a relatively quick one-month process. We’d been doing it for over a year, it was reasonably popular, and yet I decided to eliminate it from our suite of solutions.
When we developed that program, we’d hoped to reach an audience for whom Design in a Day™ wasn’t quite enough, but who also weren’t quite ready for an intensive, long, customized, strategic process and its price point. We knew what the vast majority of those clients would need, and crafted a solution meeting those needs using our productized services philosophy. (Want to get me talking? Ask me about productized services!)
But what I’ve discovered is that in between is sometimes not the best solution. Every single one of our projects that were under that umbrella quickly morphed into custom projects, with the accompanying timelines, eliminating the big advantage of something streamlined and efficient.
This experience taught me two things:
1) What I already mentioned, that an in between solution isn’t the best solution, as much as we’d like it to be.
2) It’s okay to kill something, even if it’s working on paper and the numbers pencil out.
I’ve been working really hard at a massive website overhaul of my own, and have been going through the site seeing services and information that simply “exists” but no longer service our clients or our business. (Think of it like Marie Kondo for your business or organization.)
And I’ve been ruthless with killing that stuff. The service I mentioned above is definitely the biggest and most successful thing that I chose to eliminate, and while thinking about getting rid of it made me anxious (like I said, the pricing bridge between DIAD and our more traditional process made it reasonably popular), redirecting those links was like a giant weight was gone. But lots of little things also got the ax. That relatively popular blog post that, in retrospect, raised more questions than it answered? Gone. That page about ecommerce even though we haven’t taken on a traditional ecomm project in at least two years? Goodbye! If someone asks for that info, we’re happy to send it, but it doesn’t need to be taking up space and confusing people.
When I talk to clients, I often hear the refrain, “We need to keep that because some people still want it.” But my question is, do they still NEED it? Or, rather, is it getting in the way of your longterm goals and preventing you from helping your audience as much as you can? The answer may surprise you.
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