The beginning of the year is a great time to start looking at a lot of things you want to focus more on as a business. Are there things that you want to improve on in 2019 or areas that you want to delve in to more? Maybe there are certain areas you want to stray away from in the new year or certain demographics you want to try and target more often. It really can be anything and everything depending on what kind of business yours is and where your business is at in its growth.
It may not be too much of a secret, but at Apollo Marketing we think a business’s digital footprint is super important to running a successful business! So in our opinion, the beginning of the year is a great time to start looking at ways to improve your website in order to make it more effective and drive more conversions to your business.
With that in mind, we are starting one of our first spotlight series, the web design spotlight. Every so often we will pick one principle or area of web design to shine a light on that helps contribute to creating effective and converting websites. Our first principle for this spotlight article is going to be the principle of simplicity.
Simplicity
Sometimes the best things in life are the simple things. For instance, I enjoy using a new ball point pen, or relaxing on a sunday, or puppy breath. The same can be said for a website, simple is good. Websites that have a clean design and minimal clutter filling the screen will be aesthetically pleasing and they will also drive more conversions. The less distractions there are across a web page the more people will gravitate to the important points of the page that you want them to see.
A phrase that you may see floating around web design channels that brings context to the phenomenon of simplicity is Hick’s Law. Hick’s Law describes the time it takes for people to make decisions based on how many options they have. Basically, the more options there are, the longer it will take for someone to make a decision. It’s a pretty logical jump and can certainly be applied to websites. If you have way too much clutter on your website people will be overwhelmed and you will convert less and less. Many users will just not click on anything at all and leave the website altogether.
An example that I like of a website that abides by Hick’s Law and utilizes simplicity is Tesla. The homepage screen is dominated by their product in a sleek and aesthetic. Other than that image there are really only a few other things on the screen to look at, one of them being their other cars available. So naturally your eyes are drawn to what is left on the screen and that just so happens to be the exact products Tesla wants you to look at. There is no clutter or distracting material filling the homepage. Every clickable option will take you somewhere that could eventually lead to a conversion for them.
In my life outside of professional work I am a youth soccer coach. In that coaching world something I always tell my players is that simple is good and that is why I like the simple things. If you get really good at things that are simple and foundational, you can put them all together in to a final product that is crisp and effective. I think the same thing can be said in web design, marketing, sales, or anything else. I will always be a fan of simple!
