15 Features Your Site Doesn’t Need
The worst mistake in internet marketing? Making things too complicated. It pumps up costs, slows site launches and keeps you offline when you could be online, selling stuff.
Who makes that mistake? You do. When you insist that that one feature is so important you can’t live without it, you’re killing yourself. If you can get 90% of the function with 10% of the effort, shouldn’t you?
So, here’s a list of features I think your site can probably do without, at least for now:
- Integration with your inventory management system. If you’re already selling lots online, great! Spend the fifty grand it’ll take to synchronize your store with your inventory system. Otherwise, forget it. Put it on hold.
- A fancy content management system (CMS). A full-featured, enterprise CMS is a great tool when you need it. But do you really need it? If you have a staff of two, you don’t. Use Wordpress or Movable Type, instead.
- Community content. Yah, community content is trendy as heck. But you don’t need to build your own bloody city. Before you spend the time and shell out the cash to add community content, ask yourself: Do you need to build the community yourself? Couldn’t you use Facebook? Or MySpace? Or something else? Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t need to.
- A talking, walking spokesperson. I’m sorry, but no one needs a little video person that walks onscreen and starts babbling about how wonderful this product is. I go online to get away from that. So save the cash. Don’t add a virtual spokesperson. Plus, they’re creepy as hell.
- Video. I love online video. It’s super-valuable to the right business. Is that your business? If you can’t get your message across without motion or a ‘face to face’ human element, use video. Otherwise, save the money and time.
