How to Get Over Launch Paralysis

Today, I want to talk about something a little different: Launch paralysis. What is launch paralysis? Good question! Essentially, it’s a term (that I made up) to describe what happens right before launch day.

To explain further, I’ll tell you about when I relaunched my website, earlier this fall. I had a bit of downtime over the summer and wanted to rebuild and redesign my website. I was so excited! I was building a site that was more “me” and would show off my web skills much better than my previous site. It was even going to help me streamline my workflow, because my new-fangled contact form, would help me vet clients, right from the get-go. But in the two weeks after my site was done, but before my site was launched, I was totally paralyzed! I spent hours going through the site, certain that I would find a giant gaping hole in it.

Eventually, a huge and exciting request for proposal came across my desk and I knew that I had to get over my launch paralysis, pronto. I so did not want to send out my proposal with my old site as the link. I had to have a little chat with myself. Below are some points form that internal pep talk:

1. Nobody’s perfect! Coming from a publishing background, taking a copyediting course early in my career and having a father who’s hobby was correcting his daughters’ grammar growing up, has set me up to be a bit of an editing tyrant. I’m trying to realize that it’s better to get imperfect stuff out there than to put out nothing at all. Great is the enemy of good, and all that. Not shockingly, this is a great life lesson too. But I digress …
2. My website (and yours) is a living being. The beauty of WordPress, is that you can change and edit your content as much as your little heart desires. That means that if two weeks after launch, you suddenly MUST change the copy in your contact page, you can. Easy as pie! Just because it’s out there, doesn’t mean that it can’t change. Case in point, I originally listed all of the prices for my services. Recently I realized, that move was cutting down on the awesome potential clients that were emailing me. I always could make custom estimates and work in (most) budgets, but having my pricing up on my site, didn’t reflect that. So, presto, chango, gone.
3. There’s no town-crier for website launches. As amazing as it would be to have a service that notifies everyone you’ve ever met, and the people you want to meet, that you’ve launched your website, that isn’t something that exists. (Well, actually we call it Facebook.) After most websites are newly launched or re-launched get a day or two of spiked traffic, but then it goes roughly back to normal. If your site’s design and (most importantly) content, are great, you’ll see an improvement in your viewership over time. You’re just not likely to suddenly find yourself with overwhelming traffic right after launch. Going viral happens, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the rule. Why am I telling you this? Well, it means you shouldn’t have any anxiety about who might see your site. Chances are, if you want Beyonce to look at your site, you’ll have to do more than tweet the link out with the message “Hey Beyonce! I’m a big fan, please take a look at my site.” Know what I’m sayin’?

All of this is to say, if you’re sitting on a website that is 95% done (the last 5% being writing an email to your developer to say “Let’s do this!”), just launch that sucker! It’s time and the world needs what you have to offer, so get out there. You’ll be so happy you did!

If you, or someone you love, suffers from launch paralysis, please write a comment below. Side effects may include: strong encouragement to launch your site, recommendations for proofreaders and less stress because you don’t have that mostly done site hanging over your head anymore.

Image credit: Jorgen Schyberg