Base One blog

July 18 2008 11:15 PM

I agree with 37 signals dictum that it’s best to create half an application rather than a half-arsed application.   What they mean by this, is that it’s best to start small and realistic rather than create a bloated monster, ridden with functionality that no one actually uses or understands.  From this ethos they created the excellent basecamp and from it the whole ruby on rails development framework.  They make a LOT of money.In software, the reason the American companies dominated, rather than the Japanese (who in the 70s and 80s dominated the home consumables market) is that they weren’t afraid to quickly release their software and then update it once in the market with new features, rather than wait and perfect their product before launch.  So they were first to market and they then developed their software and its feature-set based upon feedback from the users.  Those who were successful saw their software as a iterative entity, constantly evolving, and were passionately hands-on throughout.  And of course i don’t need to tell you who they were.This is not a bad approach for the b2b marketer in developing a website: just focus on the core things, which will generally be generating leads from your core user groups, and get your site up quickly, and learn together once it’s live, building it up in phases, being agile, constantly improving, constantly evolving, based upon what works and what your users do and want. Certainly helps your budget go a whole lot further. It might mean your new site might not be as big as the one you have now, but is anyone really interested in those news items from 2002?  Alternatively, you could spend 9 months and a whole lot of money developing a site then releasing it and just then letting it pretty much sit there for then next 3 years while you recover from the effort, before doing it all over again?  So, best to start with creating the perfect half-site than a scrabbling around for half-arsed content to fill your huge empty site.