Having too many options sometimes creates confusion according to Swathmore College social science professor Barry Schwartz, who coined the phrase "the paradox of choice."  Ironically, given more choices, people generally become less likely to make decisions.

A well thought-out website, therefore, focuses attention on things that are of real benefit to potential customers. First and foremost, your website should focus visitors' attention on your core marketing message or brand rather than offering a long list of things your company can do or every product and service that it offers.

Simplicity supports more effective selling by helping to eliminate potential customers' confusion.  An extremely cost-effective byproduct of keeping it simple — one that will continue to produce for your company — is that Search Engine Optimization is greatly enhanced when marketing messages get distilled right down to their essence.

Good website design must contain more than high-tech aesthetics. You must carefully decide which information is important and which is merely confusing clutter. Too much information, like too much choice, confuses rather than clarifies.

Wary visitors are constantly on the look-out for gimmicks, distractions and annoyances that send the message: "leave this website as soon as possible!"

Distractions such as unnecessary music, sounds, click-through ads, overuse of drop-down menus, site search forms, long-loading graphics and the like not only chase people away from your web pages but they go almost entirely unnoticed by the most important visitors to your website — totally blind and deaf page-crawling search engine spider robots.

Visitor friendly websites are designed and optimized to build trust and foster relationships.  They do not scare people away before they can find simple facts and marketing points that could assist them in choosing to do business with your company.

Spiderbots are programmed to find key words, phrases, titles, descriptions and text that will lead to the most efficient indexing of information available to Internet users.  No more.  No less.

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