Don't Treat Your Website Like a Garbage Disposal

I was doing the dishes, and I flipped the switch to run the garbage disposal...and nothing. 

Ah, the joys of home ownership. I am not very good at D.I.Y. home projects, but I have YouTube and good wifi, let's do this. Without checking anything else, I went to Home Depot and bought a new one. 

$109 plus tax and I have a new disposal. Time to be the family hero and get this done. I take the old one out and put the new one in and... nothing. 

Now I'm just irritated, and my jaw is clenched, I decide that it probably makes sense to check the fuse box. I'm mad at myself for this not being the first thing I do. I'm also way outside of my comfort zone now, and that is making things worse. 

Calming thoughts... deep breaths... don't throw anything. I have a bit of a temper when things don't go my way. 

The fuse wasn't tripped, so now I call some friends to bother them on their Friday night. They give me some information based on what I had done up to that point and then I run back to Home Depot to buy a plug before they close. 

Humbled and just wanting to be done (I've now got 3 hours invested in this little project) I ask an employee what else it could be and he said maybe the switch. I buy both items and a tester since I imagine this will probably happen again at some point. 

It turns out that it was the switch and not the plug. I tested some of the wires after I was about halfway through replacing the plug. Now everything works, including the original disposal.  

I see people doing this with their websites all the time. Not enough business is coming from the website, let's hire someone to tear this thing down to the studs and redo it. It needs to be better designed!

Most sites need some tweaking and some small improvements to get better results, not a do-over. Content is usually the best place to start; then you need more people looking at them, way more. 

Most business owners don't know enough to troubleshoot the issue, so they call up a designer who is, of course, going to tell you that you need a new one. Remember the old adage: "Don't ask a barber if you need a haircut."

Wouldn't it be nice to know what the problem is before you spent a lot of money on a whole new site.

With enough data any problem becomes solvable. In this case, information comes from having enough people look at your site and collecting the information and then making decisions based on that information. 

We should note here that the people we are talking about are people who are part of your target market. Individuals who are not your friends, your family, or your employees, their feedback is not relevant. 

Troubleshoot the problem, starting with the smallest components, and then test and see what happens, don't just start over. 

On an unrelated side note: does anyone want to buy a fresh out of the box garbage disposal? I'm asking for a friend.