Armageddon Roll-Out Strategies

Hey look the web is participatory and you're planning a site upgrade to use some of these new 2.0 features. In fact, you're so smart you're using a CMS/platform to harness some collective wisdom. But now how do you pick your features set? Let me guess, you told your developer "Everything," right? Maybe you looked at a list of about 45 potential features and checked off 39 of them. That's what I'd do.

The blessings of a great CMS or plug-in feature (like addthis, sharethis, wimpy player, flicker badges, etc.) are also a curse. Functionality needs to be relevant. Simply put: diverting your focus will dilute the value of your site. It's tough to get excited about improving your core and perfecting user experience. But that's your bread and butter.

It's hard not to jump on board when each feature can just take a "few hours" to add on. But these hours aren't cheap, being that development work ranges from $40-$130 and hour. Tie your user accounts to Twitter for just $1200! Useful? Depends.

Sometimes your feature list changes from a nice little red balloon gently filled with loving breaths of inspiration into a Hindenburg load of bloated, keep-up-with-the-Jones, explosion ready and disaster. A site filled with non-relevant features is bad for several reasons... First, development efforts will be diverted costing money and quality. Second, users will see the site not as a tool perfect for their interests but as vapor ware looking for their email address. Third, becoming feature obsessed means that you're most likely losing sight of your passion. You're creating the site to connect a community, generate revenue from something you love and empower your: peers, customers or even friends!

So here's the quintessential tip to remedy yourself from this common blunder. Stand in your bomb shelter, your basement, your mountain top or yard and pretend... It's the end of the world and this site is the only way these people can communicate within this niche community. Transportation is all horse-drawn, cell phone batteries only last 5 minutes, TV still sucks, radio only has 19 bands, etc. What to do!?

Which features will allow them to engage and still have time to sheer a sheep, hunt for food, and repair the barn. What are your passions as a founder? What are the community's favorite ways of interacting? What media do they love to create and consume?

This notion came to mind partially because the internet was actually designed robust enough to survive a nuclear attack. It can always reroute itself. But before such a gruesome event, your site better be well prepared. Apply the end-time scenario like a judicial test when making a judgment about your web project. Look down at the list or the email and imagine your site when users are hunkered down in their basement waiting 6-20 years for the radiation to clear.

If you can answer development questions like the world depends on it you'll be able to save time and money and keep users the happiest. Ultimately your site's success depends on being useful and getting used.