I’ll firstly preface this blog post by saying ‘Not all one stop shop websites are a bad idea’. However something we hear all the time is the insistence that ‘my new website will be the one stop shop on the internet for all things electrical/social/funny/gloopy/handmade/circular/smelly and so on’. Usually this is followed up with a comparison to one of the really big successul web giants such as Amazon or Google. What is often overlooked is each of these websites started off small, offering a very specific service and doing it very well. Only when it had completely nailed it’s particular niche were they able to start expanding their services to their existing user base and grow to be something bigger and better, a bit at a time. And this took a long time, not to mention a lot of investment.

Jumping straight in the deep end with a new website is not a bad thing. It makes you focus, gives you deadlines and makes you competitive. What is often a bad thing is losing focus of what your website is there to do and bolting on a multitude of extra features – often ones seen on other websites during the development process – in order to make your site the ‘one stop shop’ for all things spangly.

The web is not hard to get around. Going from one website to another one is a simple thing. Having two extremely niche websites open in two browser tabs next to each other is infinitely easier to use than having one goliath website trying to do both things, and doing them badly, so that their interface is difficult to use and features are hard to understand.

We use a number of pieces of web software internally in the office. These are for project management, custom relations, time tracking, invoicing and so on. In the past we’ve tried software and services that claim to offer all these things as one. They ended up being unwieldy, complex and unusable. We ended up not using them, or not using them properly. We now use separate sites and services for each. Our time tracking is done using www.toggl.com, we use Highrise and Basecamp as our CRM and Project Management and we us our own software for invoicing and calendars. Each one is a highly tailored and very easy to use standalone site that does ONE THING VERY VERY WELL.

‘One Stop Shop’ is a legacy from the physical world, where you’d be prepared to buy items at a slightly higher cost and maybe not as high a quality if they were all in one place, since otherwise you’d have to walk, drive or bus it to a variety of other shops which would take time, effort and expense. You do not have to drive sixteen miles to an out of town website to buy cheese. You click new tab on your browser and away you go.

A good exercise is to write down everything you want your website/software to do on post-it notes and then begin to place them in columns of ‘essential’, ‘non essential’ and ‘nice to have’. Usually an awful lot goes straight into essential but you need to be ruthless. Ask yourself what is the very bare minimum you need to get up and running.

I guess my rambling point is a simple one. Try to concentrate on doing one thing well, grow your userbase by focussing on delivering a product or service so well that they begin to demand more. At that point feel free to add the kitchen sink if you so desire.

My favourite ‘one stop shop’ though does still remain in the physical world right now. Near me there’s a shop claiming to be the ‘One Stop Shop Fancy Dress Shop and Smoothy Bar’. And not before time too.