Have you ever found yourself in the position where you’ve been working weeks and months on a project or a site and realize the goal(s) have not been reached?
That probably sounds familiar to many and it’s ok to admit it.
Hopefully your site or project isn’t like an upside down mortgage. That would mean the value of your site or project would be well below the investment you put into it.
How do you recognize if your site or project is upside down? There are usually a few red flags;
- It looks pretty good and normal but doesn’t meet the goals you initially set up (traffic, cost and/or revenues).
- There are more and more features (and bells and whistles) but the traffic, cost and/or revenues isn’t aligned with the increase amount of features (and cost).
- The site’s or project’s road map is well ahead of its metric goals.
- You use the word “cool” too often referring to the project and its features.
- There’s been budget overrun and spillover (its always cost more than budgeted) with any or very little objectives meet.
If you recognize just one red flag consider it a warning sign but if you recognize more than 2 you’re definitively upside down. Now, can an upside down site or project be turned around?
Usually, yes. It almost always a question of focusing on your site/project initial goals or re-visiting the site or project mission.
You may want to take a hard look and understand why it got to be upside down in the first place. Don’t do it and you’ll run into the same problems again and again. Don’t do it and you’ll be paying again a pretty heavy tax you don’t have to pay.
Re-visiting the mission
Is you’re facing a dead end or getting a feeling the site or project can’t meet its initial purpose because the environment changed (market, competitors, etc) it is time to re-visit the mission.
Seth Godin wrote a useful little book about this state; he called it The Dip. You and your team have to figure out if keeping going forward on the same path will get better or worst. Only you and your team can realistically judge the situation and see if you need to quit or not.
Focus on the initial goal(s)
For some of the reasons mentioned above your upside down site or project isn’t reaching its goals. Do you know why? It’s usually one or many of these situations:
The road map or plan has not been followed or only partially.
Remedy: Go back to it and fast! It’s usually the cheapest way to get back on track and save it. Most of the time non-core features have been added while some of the core pieces are missing or very weak. You would not add 3 more levels to your home if its foundations were shaky and there are cracks showing. Or would you?
It got side tracked to non-core initiatives vs (you guessed it) core one
Remedy: Go back to the core of your site or project! If you can’t focus or don’t like focusing on core elements, please help yourself and find someone who will.
Along the way you lost track of what needs to be achieved in order to meet its initial goals and to succeed.
Remedy: Again, go back to the basic. What do you have to demonstrate to prove your success? Remember you never set the goals yourself, someone else is always setting them for you (whether it’s your boss, investors or the market). What is the main goal and 2-3 implicit secondary ones? Hint, ask them. Then consider which metric is needed to demonstrate these goals. If the main one is revenues then figure out which is the best and most important way to achieve it (traffic? okay, but which traffic is the best, in their eyes, to achieve the main goal?). Focus on the core and let go of the fluff. It may feel uneasy at first but you’ll see, it feel pretty rewarding to achieve your goals.
External elements are forcing you to adapt.
Remedy: See if you need to adapt first then if it’s needed, change fast!
Catching up early
Okay, so you have an idea what you’ll do but are not moving fast enough. Hurry up because the initial goals just got harder to achieve. You now need to achieve much more than initially planned to consider it a success.
For example, if your goal was to reach 50,000 monthly uniques after 1 year and the secondary goal was to double it every 6 months and you’re now at year 1, that means in the six months you’ll need to reach 150,000 monthly uniques just to keep them happy. Naturally, if you’re just at 20,000 uniques it’s easier to go back to the basic at month 6 (and just have to reach 50,000) than keep going on a side track and have to reach 150,000 after 1 year. The longer you wait to go back to the basic, the harder it gets to reach your goals.
That usually translate into people’s expectations too. Consider this, if you’re reporting to someone their expectation are higher now; you have to fill the gap between where you should be in terms of your goals plus where you should be with your next goal. You need to achieve 2 milestones at almost the same time.
If you’re reporting to investors (or courting them) they’re now disappointed by the lack of execution; you’ll need to step it up a couple of notches and deliver results asap to meet their expectations. Otherwise, you’ll face your worst fear; bye, bye funding.
If you’re in a competitive market your competitors did not stand still, they kept moving forward and you now have a bigger gap to simply catch them before even thinking to pass them and get ahead.
Overall, if your project or site is upside down the answer to successfully turn it around is to go back to the basic and just do it. Period. Don’t find excuses, just do it.
