As attention spans shrink in today’s society, why are we still trying to put everything and the kitchen sink on our websites? Ask yourself – when you go to a website, how much reading do you do? Ever skip reading a page because the content is too long? How many times have you left a website because it was so crowded with links, pictures, blinking graphics, etc. that you couldn’t find what you were looking for fast enough?
Some serious offenders in the over-crowded website category are realtors. Their sites are usually jammed full with calculators, city profiles, school information, buying and selling information, mortgage glossaries and more.
Don’t get me wrong. Content is what makes a website, and the more freshly-created content you have, the more the Google bots love you. But content layout is equally important. Clean, user-friendly websites can do the trick in what is known as minimalism. Typically used to define art, minimalism is about stripping the website down to the “essentials” or “fundamental features”. Some examples of the minimalistic design are Google (of course), Wikipedia, and a Phoenix realtor who managed to make the cut (See, Realtors? It’s possible!).
Here are some things to keep in mind when attempting to peel your website down to the essentials:
Share the Love
With the dawn of social networks comes the ability to spread your content around. So don’t feel the need to host everything on the front page of your website. Share some content on your other networks and link it back to your website.
Talk Less
Bullet content. Break it up with headers. Don’t ramble. No one is going to read your mile-long article. Especially if they’re viewing it from a mobile device.
Diversify the Medium
Try video for some content. It’s better for SEO anyway. Package your longer content into downloadable whitepapers or ebooks. Put a few behind a data collection form to generate an email list.
Test!
Get someone who knows nothing about your business to run through your website. Is it easy to navigate for them?
These are just a few ideas to help thin out an over crowded website and embrace more minimalistic design. Here at Zig !t Marketing, we’ll be working on the same to make our site better. What are some other good examples of minimalist web designs that you’ve seen?
I really like the point that you raise about a very common problem that I see in website designs. I have long thought that many web designers make websites too complicated and add too many unnecessary elements that do not help prospects and customers to achieve their goals.
One of the world’s leading web design experts, Ben Hunt, has said that EVERY element on the page must have a purpose and help end users to achieve their goals.
I believe that his website, WebDesignfromScratch.com, is a great example of a minimalist website design.