Diminishing returns; when is it time to take your website live?

Being a perfectionist is not always the best way to be. Especially in a world where being first to market isn't the worst thing ever. Like many things in life, deciding when to take your new website live is a fine balancing act. The sooner you can start building up a readership or client base, the better; but you risk serious damage to your site's reputation if its functional and technical performance is below par. So when is the right time?

There's an old addage (known as Pareto's law) that can be applied to websites and their development. Roughly put:

In effect, this is saying that you can get most of the way to completion fairly easily. Thereafter, your going to have to work harder and harder for less returns.

Knowing this, where is the point at which we say, "Ok, this is good enough, let's put it online"? Before I continue, let me point out that I'm not advocating you go live if there's parts of the website that are actually broken. As a law:

You can really harm your chances of success by putting up something that doesn't work. But that's not the same as being incomplete. The distinction is important because a website might be very valuable to people even if it doesn't have all the major features that its creators intend it to have. In cases like this, there's no reason to hold the site back.

One of the best ways to decide exactly when to release a site to the public is to clearly understand the site's primary objectives and ensure that these are adequately met. If users' expectations can be fulfilled then this is a good indication that you're ready to go live. In other words, if your site promises to sell the finest coffee in the world, don't go live if you haven't properly configured the checkout process. Being able to purchase said coffee is clearly a reasonable expectation given the site's promise.

Understand the difference between a critical criteria and a desireable one. It may be nice to have a forum where your coffee drinking clientele can discuss their cuppa, but it's not critical to the success of your website, so potentially it could be more beneficial to launch now and bring that feature in later.

It's become accepted practice for websites to upgrade and add new features with time, and, no matter what type of site you operate, you'll find the same thing:

Remember, it can be detrimental to hold back a website launch for the sake of non-critical features or functionality. Would you prefer to add those features knowing that you already have eyeballs on your site, or do you want to put the effort in before you know whether or not anyone's going to be interested in the first place?

Sorry, I guess there's no definitive answer. You'll have to think about what's best for you and your website. Best of luck...