As part two of my Things You Should Know Before Building Your Website series, I’m going to discuss a common – a very common – pitfall that many fall into when planning a new website project: perfectionism.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all saying that we should slap anything online that’s incorrect or poorly written or looks bad. I’m not advocating that at all. What I am advocating is realizing that websites are dynamic things and should be changed, edited, improved, experimented with and toyed with… a lot. This conflicts with traditional print marketing mindset, where there is a practical necessity for committing to design and content and being stuck with it until you are willing to reinvest lots of dollars for rewrites, redesigns and reprints.

On the web, however, the opposite is true. The more you add and edit and test and experiment, the better it is for you – the more you learn, the more traffic you get. Change doesn’t make you look shifty, it makes you engaged in your message and encourages you to pay closer attention to your online presentation (which is where new prospects are going to go FIRST to know more about you, like it or not).

I bring this up because I see so many getting caught up in the “wait till I write that 31st page before we go live” thing quite a bit. However, that truth is that no one will ever notice that that 31st page isn’t there. Don’t wait for that last page to be written. Get your basic stuff online and add to it or edit as you go. Your new website can’t do a thing for you unless it’s online.