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Once upon a time there was an incredibly intelligent and amazingly adorable little 9 month old girl (though I’m a bit biased!).
This little baby loved looking at books. She would sit on her floor and turn the pages one-by-one, get to the end of the book, flip it over and start all over again.
For the books she really enjoyed, she’d flip through them 5 – 10 times in a row before she getting bored and moving on to something else. Other books, however, she would toss aside as soon as she turned to the first page.
One day her father (no slouch in his own right) noticed something. The books that she quickly tossed aside were very busy. They had lots of pictures, colors, text and more. It was hard to focus on any one thing. Frustrated and overwhelmed by these books, his darling daughter would quickly move on to something more appealing.
This made the father wonder, “if babies are overwhelmed by lots of pictures, colors, text and more in a book, why would many website owners and designers think things are any different for their site visitors?”
It seems pretty obvious – people visiting a website want to find exactly what they’re looking for FAST! If they don’t, they won’t make it past the first page and will quickly move on to another, more appealing site.
Yet so many still try to cram every last graphic, offer, and piece of information they can on their home page (or, even worse, their landing pages).
If they would only keep things clean and simple . . . if they would make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for . . . if they would stop trying to tell their whole story on one page of their site . . .
then customers would be more likely to stay on the site and buy something, or contact them, or sign up for their newsletter.
An then everyone would live happily ever after.
