I’m sure we all agree that simple, clean websites benefit users and business alike. Simple, clean sites benefit the user by making tasks easier to achieve. And of course if completing these tasks result in revenue for the business then everyone’s happy. But the problem is.. simple is sometimes bloody hard to achieve.
This wouldn’t be a real blog without a top 5 list now would it. So here is my “5 ways to inject some simplicity in to your site” post.
1. Simplify site objectives
Its easier to focus on a small number of tasks. This is important to remember during the planning and developing stage. Too many goals for a site and a project will soon spiral out of control without focus resulting in a finished product that is unable to deliver on any of its multitude of objectives.
2. Keep all stages of the project as simple as possible
Too many meetings and technical specs that are too detailed and hard to follow will bog down the development process. I’m no expert on project management, but a good project manager will try to avoid information overload and keep their team focused on attacking the core areas of a project to ensure the main user tasks of a site are addressed effectively.
3. Learn to recognise distraction
Common culprits of distraction are blogs, polls, forums, photo galleries and social media (yes I hate the term too). Some of these things can greatly benefit a company but generally speaking if your sites core focus is selling office stationary and not creating engaging content then a blog is probably going to be a distraction rather than a benefit.
More often than not these “secondary features” exist for SEO reasons. More content on the site means more keywords for search bots to pick up and in turn increase search rankings. But this practice just results in messy unstructured sites that become unusable and fail to get users to convert.
4. Keep control
Every piece of content should exist to help a user complete a task. If you work in a large company with many stake holders, you will need to keep tight controls on who can add/edit content, especially if that content exists in close proximity to a key call to action. Too much copy on a page and a call to action will become increasingly less obvious. As a result your site will become less effective.
Restrictions on editing content should be tighter the closer the user gets to completing a task. Nothing should distract a user from say the final click of a “place my order” button. This is not a place to up sell and inform them about other products and you certainly shouldn’t be showing them any banners. All you would be doing is giving them more opportunity to exit before they buy your product. The deeper a user travels down a funnel the simpler your content an UI should become.
Keeping an eye on conversion rates regularly will alert you to any problems in this area. You can even get Google Analytics to send you an automated alert if conversions drop bellow your normal expected levels.
5. Keep your guard up
You have a successfully simple site with clearly defined business goals and visitors are becoming loyal customers every day. But now you have a new challenge… avoiding bloat. Some new hot shot in the company wants a “new feature”. Even though the site is now live don’t be fooled into thinking the project is over. Be as vigilant about adding new features as you were during the planning stage. If its not core to the business and feels like a distraction for both the user and internal resources then just say no. Keep it simple stupid.