I did another experiment last week…
I launched something that wasn’t perfect. But I knew I needed to launch it so I could gather feedback. It was a series of emails. Because I wanted to give the user control, I had a link that people could click if they didn’t want to get those emails any more.
But small problem … I forget to actually add the link.
People were not happy! I got a bunch of emails from people saying “why are you using this dark UX pattern?”
If you’ve never heard of “dark UX”, it’s basically when there’s something in the UX that aims to trick the user so that the business or company gains something. Learn more about dark UX patterns if you’re curious.
It was an honest mistake and I felt horrible! People were generally forgiving. But I know it made me look pretty bad! I was also testing out a new software for email and so in the whirlwind of trying to figure out other things, far more complex than adding links, I messed up something that was pretty basic!
The point is that we all make mistakes!
In the “link to know” section below, you will find an awesome article about why you must ship imperfect products.
Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but I cannot emphasize this enough! Don’t ship something that’s 100% broken. But it doesn’t need to be perfect. You want everything on the customer side of things to work. But everything doesn’t have to work 100% on the back end.
Here’s an example from my business last week…
I launched a new checkout process for a course I sell. Unfortunately, it was taking forever to figure out an issue with PayPal and another system. This meant that once people purchased on PayPal they weren’t getting automatically enrolled in the actual course. I spent HOURS one day trying to figure this out.
Then someone said to me, “if it’s taking so long, why don’t you just launch it and add people to the course system manually?”.
Of course … that makes total sense. I felt pretty ridiculous for not thinking about it myself. But sometimes we rely too much on tech. Sometimes we expect the software to do everything. But early in your product, software doesn’t have to do everything. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty and just launch it and figure out the tech later.
My challenge to you this week is to look at what you’re working on and ask yourself and your team, “What is stopping us from launching?” And if the answer is something that you can do manually for a bit, then just hit launch and get your hands dirty for a few weeks!