Trust the Process

“I Created the Most Beautiful Site EVER!” -- AJ Trimble

Have you ever visited a website and thought to yourself, “Wow! What a beautiful site,” only to hit the mouse and move on? Why?

Have you ever created such a site yourself? I know I have. In fact, as you can see from my quote above, I once created what I believe was the most beautiful site ever.

Okay, perhaps that might be a slight exaggeration, but it did look great. I spent months working on it, finding and testing different themes, playing around with the code (e.g. HTML, CSS, etc.), throwing in dozens of images... It truly was a work of art.

Now, I don’t mention this site to brag. Far from it. I mention it because I want you to go back and read my story again and see if you notice what is missing. Ready? Go.

Did you find it? Here’s the missing element: while I was constantly tweaking the look and design of the site, installing all the bells and whistles, trying to make it the prettiest site you’ve ever seen, I wasn’t creating any actual content. That's a problem.

Why is that a bad thing? Because almost no one ever comes to your site because it’s pretty. (What would they even search for?) There is generally one thing and one thing only that brings people to your site: quality content.

People go to Google searching for answers to questions, tips on how to do something, entertainment, news, reviews, etc. And when they find a site that delivers on what it is they are looking for, the LAST thing they care about is how beautiful the site is.

Some of the most helpful sites — and, thus, the highest ranking — are downright boring. Simple, clean designs with (gasp!) plain white backgrounds.

Trust the Process

I often see new WA members getting caught up in design. “What theme should I use?” “How do I change the images?” “Where do I change the background color?” "How can I have one of those cool spinny things like XYZ site?"

Here’s the thing. Kyle and Carson are smart. Really friggin’ smart. And they’ve been doing this for a long time. In other words, they know what works.

As such, the training programs are taught in a specific order for a specific reason. And if you notice, site design isn’t high on the to-do list, is it?

Sure, there are some quick lessons in the beginning regarding finding a theme and getting set up, but that’s only because you have to have a sandbox to play in.

But almost immediately after that, what do the lessons cover? Yep… content creation. If you are not creating quality content on a consistent basis, everything else is merely an exercise in futility.

Please, do NOT focus on creating the most beautiful site that no one will ever see; it only ends in frustration. Believe me, I know — been there, done that, got the t-shirt to prove it.

Trust the process and keep writing.

AJ

P.S. By the way, as a side note, back to the theme thing for a bit, unless a new member has experience with WordPress already, I always recommend they go with the theme Kyle uses in the training.

This will set them up for instant feedback. Kyle shows something, they do it, and if their site doesn’t look exactly like his, they immediately know something was missed and they can go back a correct it. Just my .02 cents :-)