Due to reasons beyond our control, much of this conversion ended up on my shoulders.

Ignore the amount of work involved. Yes, it would have been nice and we would have been up sooner with less pain. But that’s not the big advantage of working with a partner.

The big advantage is having a second pair of eyes.

You’ll notice that I’ve said several times that there are a lot of very talented web designers out there. Yeah, well they’re all producing multiple great designs.

Quite frankly, there is an embarassment of riches out there for free or almost free! The problem is choosing which design(s) to use as the base – and how to tweak the design. That’s where a partner is most useful.

Start by creating a list of designs that you like. Let your partner go through the list and select out the designs that they like. Then repeat until you are down to one design.  One trick is to drop 1/3 of the designs each time. So let’s say you start with 12 designs.  Your partner would pick the 8 designs they like the best.  Then you would pick the 6 designs you like best.  And so on.

There are also a number of other decisions that are helped by a second point of view — from structure to widgets to other software. Having a partner to discuss problems, and arbitrary decisions is invaluable.

A business partner is best, but even if you don’t have a business partner, a spouse or trusted friend is better than trying to go it alone.

Lesson Learned #4:

Two Heads Are Better Than One

Don’t overestimate the value of a second point of view.

There will be many times that you will become overwhelmed with the number of choices available to you.

Some of those choices are mostly arbitrary or esthetic in nature.

And yet, you still need to make the best choice you can.

That’s when a partner is invaluable. Someone to argue with you over a solution. To make choices based on their esthetics. To just be someone other than yourself.

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