Question: If you’re going to build a microsite, what’s the best platform to use? Webflow? Unbounce? WordPress? Or…? There are so many platforms? Help!
Answer: The team you choose is 100x more important than the platform used. Don’t even think about this question, but instead, think long and hard about what team to hire. And then follow your team’s recommendation.
Let’s dive into this question. Every platform has its strengths and its weaknesses. And the answers can get really complex: WordPress is great for X and Y. Webflow is great for Q and R. And so forth.
But it truly doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter.
Let’s take an extreme example to make the point:
You need a bazooka. Do you buy The Best Bazooka on the market, and have it aimed and used by the cheapest, “I just picked up a bazooka for the first time ever this morning” guy to manage it, aim it, and shoot it at the target? Or do you buy the The Second Best Bazooka (or perhaps the Ninth Best Bazooka) but you hire the guy who has spent the past 11 years focusing intensely on just using that one bazooka, knowing every minor little detail and quirk about it, to manage, aim, and shoot it at the target?
The question answers itself!
It’s a Silicon Valley classic observation that what makes or breaks a company is team, team, team, team. And the guys and girls who build your microsites are members of your team.
It’s a question for another series on how to find the right team. But let’s leave that aside, once you find the perfect microsite-building team for you, it will turn out:
Your team happens to prefer Tool X for situation A, and Tool Y for situation B.
Will your team be correct or not?
It doesn’t matter because, their chosen tool will be the tool they know every quick about.
They’ll have set processes with their favorite tool.
They will know that with this tool, every time the do a Q, they also need to make sure they configure an R.
They will know to make sure that with this tool, don’t use it like that, because that can lead to problems.
When the tool breaks, or causes a problem, they will have seen it before dozens of times, so they’ll know immediately how to fix it.
And that is so much more valuable than using a tool that in theory is better.
The “in theory” is critical in the last sentence. These lists as to which is better or worse as always seen “in theory.” But the theory isn’t nearly as important as the practice of, which team is in your hand, next to you, and going to make it happen?
And it gets better: this applies not just to finding a team to build your microsite… but to build everything.
Morgan Friedman has been building and running Display campaigns on top of GDN Network of Adwords, err, he means "Google Ads," for almost 15 years. Friedman is, by nature, an obsessive optimizer, and has been A/B testing every obscure option, configuration, strategy, and tactic on Display Ads. Oh and search ads, as well as figuring out how to grow companies and politicians from just the seed to hundreds of thousands of users, or voters, as well. His favorite number is eleven. Morgan enjoys writing about Managed Placements.