Your website probably needs less.

There’s a strange thing that happens to websites over time.

They grow.

A new service gets added, so we add another section. Someone decides customers need more information, so another paragraph goes in. There’s a new accreditation, so we need to mention that. Then somebody thinks the homepage needs another button, another image or another message.

None of those decisions seem particularly bad on their own.

But give it a few years and you can end up with a website that’s trying to have twelve conversations with somebody at the same time.

And then we wonder why people aren’t converting.

I see this a lot when I look at websites. The problem often isn’t that something is missing. There’s actually too much there.

More information doesn’t automatically create more confidence.

I completely understand why businesses do it.

You know how much your company does and you want people to understand all of it. You don’t want to leave out a service that somebody might be interested in or forget to mention something that makes you different.

So you keep adding.

But your customer isn’t necessarily looking for everything you know.

They’re looking for an answer to whatever brought them to your website in the first place.

Can you solve my problem? Do I trust you? Is this relevant to me? What do I need to do next?

If those answers are buried underneath mountains of information, then all that extra content isn’t helping. It’s getting in the way.

That’s why I think one of the hardest parts of good website design is knowing what not to put on the page.

Clarity takes confidence.

There can be a fear that if a website looks simple, it somehow makes the business look simple.

I think the opposite is often true.

When a business can explain something complicated in a way that feels incredibly straightforward, it gives me confidence that they understand it.

They don’t need to hide behind jargon or throw every piece of information they have at me.

They know what matters.

That’s the difference between simple and simplistic.

One removes unnecessary complexity. The other removes necessary information.

Getting that balance right takes thought.

Your homepage doesn't need to tell your entire story

This is probably one of the biggest things I’d change about how businesses think about their websites.

Your homepage doesn't need to answer every possible question.

It needs to make somebody want to take the next step.

Think of it like meeting somebody for the first time. You wouldn't introduce yourself and then immediately spend twenty minutes explaining your entire life story.

You'd have a conversation.

You'd give them enough to understand who you are, find some common ground and give them a reason to continue talking to you.

A good website should feel much the same.

There’s absolutely a place for detailed information, case studies, service pages and technical explanations. But everything doesn’t need to be fighting for attention on the first screen somebody sees.

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is give your content some room to breathe.

Let the important message actually be important.

And be confident enough to remove the things that aren't helping.

So here's the question I'd ask you:

If you were forced to remove 50% of the content from your website tomorrow, what would you keep, and would your customers actually miss everything you removed?