The first version is live. What carries into the next one?
The day a website goes live, everyone looks at the pages.
WEDO’s first website version going live was the first thing on this road to actually land. It’s a real company with its own business, and the site really is online. Open it now, though, and you’ll see it’s only a first version: content, journeys and some interactions are still being filled in. I don’t want to tell it as a finished story.
What made me stop and think was something else.
What’s left in your hand afterwards
When you used to finish a website, what you had left was that website. The next project would start the same way: find a designer again, feel your way through the process again, fall into the same holes again. There was experience, but it lived in people’s heads, and when they left, it left too.
This time was a little different. There was one small moment in the work: every test passed, and the faults only showed once a real browser was open. So a rule stayed behind: passing tests doesn’t mean anyone can see it. Anything that moves gets watched in a real browser, start to end, in both directions.
That rule went into a way of building and checking. The next job started with it already on the list.
How much time it saved, I haven’t measured. But the next project doesn’t have to work this out from zero.
Why I care about this
Because most people’s effort is written in sand. You’re capable, you get it done, and the next morning you’re back at the shore. The years go up, but what you could actually carry away doesn’t. And the tide now comes in faster than it used to.
If what you finished this time can be used by the next company, the nature of the thing changes. It’s no longer another job done. It’s one more starting point. One starting point isn’t worth much. What about ten? A hundred?
I don’t know the answer. I only know the account deserves a different way of adding up: not just what did this earn, but what did it leave.
What it doesn’t prove yet
A rule doesn’t go and look by itself. A first website doesn’t mean a business has worked. It hasn’t shown how much it saved or how many orders it brought. Those will have to wait for later footprints.
But you choose the road first. This is the one I’ve chosen.
Your turn
What could your next project inherit from your last one? If you can’t answer straight away, that question may be the best use of your week.
