daveclick.com

All components of a website should be kept as simple as possible.  On the web, the user is in the driver’s seat. If you confuse your users, they’ll do a quick u-turn and leave your site in the dust.  Keeping things simple is not always easy.  When I am writing marketing copy for a website, my tendency is to shove every known product benefit onto one page.  When this happens, I try to step back and remind myself, "Too many words is as good as none.  If there’s too much, they won’t read a single word."  The way to present your entire message simply is to use links to connect small digestible chunks of information.

Everything Else Too!

Simplicity should not stop with the copy.  Images, color schemes, and navigation should all be kept as simple as possible.  If there are a gazillion links on a page, it requires a lot of effort to find the link the user is actually looking for.  It’s analogous to a guy going to a Walmart Supercenter to buy a single item, a screwdriver.  99.9% of the items in that store are useless to him.  To get what he wants, he has to walk a 1/4 mile negotiating shopping cart traffic, stand in long lines, and listen to cheapskates argue about a $0.25 coupon - all for a single screwdriver!  The difference between Walmart and a complex website is that a web surfer can easily end an unpleasant experience with a single click of a button.  Having invested so much time and effort, a Walmart shopper will most likely persevere until the end.  A web surfer has no reason to tolerate a bad experience when there are plenty of sites out there that can provide a better one.

Keep it simple!!!

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