Clutter. No body likes a messy house, messy car interior, messy anything. So why should your website be messy? If a website has clutter, customers assume a lack of product or service. There can be too much on screen for a visitor to focus upon. Viewing a site through a tablet or phablet can make the mess even worse.When your website does not work, you don’t work. Finally, adding too many elements can impede page speed, since browsers have to call each element in a website.
Removing clutter can be a bit of process, but fortunately there are many ways that the process can begin. Here are a few ways to smooth your website out for your site visitors:
- First, and easiest tip - limit image and content elements. Designing with an eye for tablets and mobile devices forces a choice on eliminating images that may not reveal a new impression of your products, services, or businesses.
- If you are unsure of certain elements, consider running an A/B test. The test can decide which image or a sales copy within a site element attracts customers best
- Plan for a footer that contains key information, such as address, social media links, site map. If you are unfamiliar with web design, ask designers to help explain how to update the elements. Usually this is a matter of tweaking an HTML element, but make sure you understand how the CSS impacts that element.
- Eliminate auto-playing messages and other "pop-up" elements - these are woefully outdate. Instead plan on a simple widget or a summary page that explains service details. Also, consider a short video channel to convey complex ideas.
- "Prattle less" about your business in site copy – save some detail for blogs and tweets. Instead, create short paragraphs of 3-4 lines with sentences no longer than 35 words. People tend to scan website page rather than read with a deeper understanding online, so brief content makes for more efficient means to explain products and services.
- Use traffic flow reports to see if visitors are regularly navigating off your site at a certain page. This can indicate if content needs to be moved to more visible page.
- Another analytics report than can aid clutter decisions is the Site Search. It can reveal if certain content or topics are sought and creates a reason to leave the site. This can provide some ideas as to how to treat the content currently presented on site.
