What Ordering an In-N-Out Burger Can Teach You about Creating a Successful Website

The other night, I went over to In-N-Out to get a burger for dinner. After I placed my order, I was waiting in my car when I hear the guy in the lane next to me place his order. He told the girl through the speaker, “I’ll have a 3×2, animal style.” For those of you not familiar with In-N-Out’s “secret menu”, a 3×2 means three burger patties and 2 slices of cheese. “Animal Style” means the burger is cooked with mustard and their secret sauce plus they add pickles and grilled onions.

But here’s what got my attention. The guy then says, “No salt on the patties.” I’m thinking to myself, “Huh? Dude, you order triple meat and double cheese animal style and you’re concerned with some salt on the burgers?” But it gets worse. The guy then tells the girl through the speaker, “And, I’ll have an order of fries.” The girl then understandably asks him, “Is salt on the fries okay?” The guy immediately replies, “Sure.” Now I’m really thinking, “What?!!!”

Now you’re probably wondering what this all has to do with creating a successful website. Well, it’s all about focusing on the right things and making sure you don’t get bogged down obsessing on perfection. Too often website owners, particularly beginners (although it can happen to all of us), start procrastinating when trying to create website content. Whether it’s the words, images, video, etc., people want everything to be perfect before we let the world see it—every little detail. And what very often happens is that by focusing too much on minutia, nothing gets accomplished and the content is never created or posted online.

Getting back to our burger friend, you might be thinking, “Buy hey, that’s not a little thing. Maybe the guy has to watch his salt intake. Maybe he doesn’t like salt.” Again, looking at the evidence that’s definitely not the case. If he was really health conscious, he’s not going to be ordering a triple cheeseburger cooked animal style. And he obviously doesn’t have an issue with the taste of salt because he wants it on his fries. Sometimes when you’re too close to a situation, you don’t fully realize what’s happening. Sometimes you do need to take a step back to get a better view of things.

Back to creating your website. The great thing about creating content for your site is that you can always go back and edit, add, and delete stuff. It doesn’t have to be perfect the first time you publish it! While everyone wants valuable quality content, it’s better to have some kind of new content as opposed to having nothing because you feel it’s not quite right yet. The one piece of advice I’ve gotten from the top bloggers is that consistency is the key. In order to build trust and authority with your audience, you need to give them content on a regular basis. And, you can’t do that if you’re trying to be too perfect and obsessing over every little thing.

Don’t forget, if you’re pressed for time, you can always outsource some of the more time-consuming tasks or things that you feel aren’t your strong suit. For example, you can use a site like Fiverr, Upwork, or one of the other websites that let you hire people to do your graphics, video editing, proofreading, etc. Then, you can work on the stuff that you enjoy and are better at and leave the other tasks to them.

So remember, the key to a successful website is consistency—not perfection. Don’t obsess over details that in the bigger picture aren’t worth worrying about and prevent you from your goal of creating and publishing helpful valuable content for your audience. Think about it the next time you have that hamburger—or a veggie burger if that’s your preference!