Stick to your knitting

My mother-in-law is an incredible knitter. She's forever dropping off a new jumper or hat for my little son. They look great and get far more positive feedback than anything we've bought him in Mothercare or Next.

However, my mother-in-law is not good with computers. She's also not good at fixing things, mowing the lawn and accents. She should stick to her knitting.

Many website owners could learn from my mother-in-law.

They try to do too much, too soon. What probably starts as a clear, single-minded proposition, soon degrades as the very real pressures of making money mount. Perhaps it is an effort to keep investors happy by wrangling revenue out of every inch of a site? Perhaps it is about being blinded by the plethora of features available, rather than stopping to concentrate on the few features that will make the difference. Whatever it is, bolting on additional revenue-generating features or fashionable technology, can often be to the detriment of the whole.

All the big successes on the Internet started with a clear, simple proposition.

• Google = "organising the worlds information"
• Blogger = "helping people have their own voice on the web"
• YouTube = "the premier destination for you to watch and share original videos"
• Twitter = "Twitter asks “what’s happening” and makes the answer spread across the globe to millions, immediately"
• Facebook = "Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life."

I'm trying to bear this in mind on all the projects I work on. On more agile projects its too easy to get caught up in what we could do. I'm sure everyone at some stage has browsed some of the best sites out there, cherry-picking features to include on their own site. The result though is almost inevitably a mess. A mess that users don't know how to use, and businesses struggle to make money from.

My mother-in-law is far more multi-faceted than most websites, and aside from knitting she is also a great teacher and hostess. When she tries doing something and turns out to not be very good at it, she stops.

I wish more websites were like my mother-in-law.