Take some flash introductions, a colorful animation of your core business message, and a custom designed website navigation menu and you have a site that looks great and is utterly confusing at the same time. In fact, the beautiful expensive website sitting in front of the user will more than likely drive the user away than invite them to review a business message, or better yet, purchase a product.
Business websites today are facing increased pressure to outdo each other with new technologies, fresh redesigned looks, and the latest whiz bang digital bells and whistles that can wow a virtual audience. It is for this reason that visitors are in increasing numbers pointing their browsers to simple, easy to navigate websites now more than ever before.
Simplicity is not a new concept when it comes to design. Designers of virtually every trade and skill set use simplicity as a starting point for many of their most incredible works. However, on the web, there still remains a more is better approach when it comes to design that is off putting to the average visitor.
Even the most technologically savvy internet users are unable to fully navigate all the unique features available for websites to use on the Internet with today including robust animations, powerful introductions, and menu commands that double as product images. In short, complex on the internet is confusing to most visitors.
Simplicity on the other hand can help drive a website’s message home in a way that all those fancy websites cannot. With a simple and easy to navigate design visitors to websites can instantly grab whatever it is they are looking for in the shortest amount of time possible. In the end is this not what all people are interested in doing on the web? Finding what they are looking for in as little time as possible? For most the answer would be yes, but for those interested in just killing time online, simplicity still makes sense.
Understanding that those in a rush would be far better served by a simple and effective web design is a start, but understanding how those not in a rush are best served by simplicity is an ends to a means when it comes to understanding the online consumer.
People that are interested in doing detailed product research, or research on a particular individual, company, or other entity, are still best served by simple accessible information online. Google’s sleek and simple search engine design is a marquee example for this concept. For so called web 2.0 websites, those built off 5 page templates with page titles like FAQ, Homepage, and Contact Us, are also regarded as positive pushes towards the simple line.
Webmasters are best off building websites that offer easy to find information that provides the easiest path from visitor question to satisfied answer.
