Nov 11 2008
Website Sensory Overload - Keep it Simple
Have you ever been to website where the subject and content is lost in all the clutter? The webpage opens up and you are immediately bombarded with ads, both static and flashing, division of topics, multiple headers and a double row menu across the top; and that is all before you start to scroll down. Then all of a sudden a popup appears in the middle of your screen asking you to subscribe to an RSS feed or sign up for an email newsletter. WOW talk about “website sensory overload”.
I guess I come from old school web design, if there is such a thing as old school. I believe in the Keep It Simple philosophy of design. When a visitor comes to one of my sites I want to be able to immediately find what they are looking for. I do not want distractions and I don’t want my visitor to have to hunt for the information they are seeking.
Keeping your design simple has another major advantage as well. SEO (search engine optimization) is much easier on a simple site than on one with multiple layers of what some call information, what I call distractions.
I look at each website design two ways. How easy is it for my human visitor to navigate through my website and find what they are looking for and second, how the search engines move through the site on their periodic crawls. What I have found is that if the site is easy for a human to use then it will be very easy for a search engine to crawl. True, my websites might not be as “pretty” and “flashy” as some and they will never be considered as “eye candy” but what they will do is provide a constant source of information for the visitor.
Simple design equals simple use which equals a sticky website. A sticky website means repeat visitors and repeat visitors will bring lots of traffic and you will benefit from that traffic by simple “unobtrusive” limited advertising, whether it be a banner ad or something as simple and effective as Adsense.
I would rather provide my visitors with solutions that may involve 2 or 3 advertisers than solutions that offer 15 or 20 advertisers. Those 2 or 3 will probably pay more than the total of the 15-20 due to the increased traffic you are sending them.
Anyway, that is my opinion for what it is worth. How do you feel about this subject?
[...] doesn’t all need to be stuffed into one spot. I think as more and more people become numb to webpage sensory overload, they are going to welcome a simple interface that quickly takes them to their answer. On subject [...]
I think that you are spot on. When you have so many elements on your web page, you make it very difficult for yourself (as a blog author or webmaster) to achieve the actions you desire from your readers and site visitors. I call this diluting your traffic and it is always more visible on low traffic sites.