Small Office, Home Office Information

Why Do Great Ideas Sometimes Turn Into Great Failures?

A couple of weeks ago we had a great idea about one of our websites. It had been online and making money for quite some time but, like all business related things, we were always looking for ways to improve it and increase the revenue stream.

It was reasonable to describe the site as moderately successful and growing slowly but of course we wanted more.

So we had a great idea and in a matter of days Toni turned the site into something that looked entirely different. It still dealt with the same topics that it had in the past but now it tried to be something that it wasn’t.

And last night when we went over some stats we realised that the changes that had been made had not had a positive impact on the site at all. The great idea was obviously producing into a less than great outcome.

It didn’t take much thought to work out that we had made several fundamental errors when we had decided to make the changes.

Lack of Forethought
The first error was that we had come across something that was working for someone else and we immediately assumed that it would work for us. We were dazzled by the money this person was making from his website and wanted the same result for ourselves.

Lack of Planning
The second error was that we spent very little time in looking at the fundamentals of what made the other person’s site successful. If we had taken the time to think things through we might never have made the changes to our site.

If we had stopped to plan we would have realised that the business model used by the other person required time and commitment that we couldn't give to our site.

Greed
The third error was to forget that there is seldom any fast track to success.

A little more time spent in analysing the basics behind the other person’s success might have saved a lot of wasted time and effort. A cold shower might have helped us look beyond the prospect of big dollars to the reality of the situation.

And instead of assuming that a total change in the way our site presented itself would lead to success we should have considered a period of testing with some less drastic changes first.

That’s not to say that there have not been lessons to learn from the other person’s site because there have. But those lessons were really just minor tweaks instead of great ideas.

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5 Sep 2005

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