EXPLAINED: Keeping Your Website Simple

I will be starting a series on “EXPLAINED” which provides in-depth insight into a selection of topics to do with your website. Following these, you should be able to build yourself a pretty good website, I’ll say! 

The first of my “Explained” series is about keeping your website simple.

This is, regardless if website or not, designs should be keep simple. They are used in advertising your brand, and your website is just another form of advertising, but a very important one!

People do not like, nor can they handle, over-complicated designs. They get lost and more-often-than-not, you begin to lose them. You begin to lose them in understanding your information and you begin to lose their focus. Both are very important.

The saying “more is less” could be very rightly so for design, and something to live by for designer. Of course, as always, there can be exceptions, but generally, it is important to have less, and in most instances, you can provide the same information, and in better format, by keeping it simple!

Websites are obviously a foundational place to display your business to the world. Websites are easily accessible and so should the content you have on it! A website should display a few simple things, take note of these:

• Contact form, email address or phone number(s);
• Short and sweet information about yourself or brand;
• Portfolio displaying your best pieces. Possibly put your best pieces first, unless it’s chronologically ordered;
• Landing page is good to display a recent product launch or home page with frequently updated (and interesting!!) content.
• List of all the services you offer.

I will be transparent and say for many companies, you MUST provide more than this (including all legal) but generally for someone starting out or trying to keep it simpler, here is a good starting list of things to include.

Website, surprisingly as I once thought, do not need fancy headings, animations (this includes flashing headings, etc) and in fact, these can reck it more often than not. Unless your business is about animations and you sell them, these things can look out of place and detract your audience from reading your important information, and frankly, can leave your website looking tacky. This is what I have discovered over time, and of course, this can be different for every website and person - we are all unique.


Remember to keep it simple and tell people exactly what they need to know, and to the point. Don’t blab, don’t tell a story, tell them what they need to know! Think of it like a tweet, there is only limited space to write everything you want, so you NEED to condense it and make it sweet nevertheless.

Best of luck. Contact me for any tips or to review and point our benefits to maximise your website: daniel@amaxdesigns.com

Always available for a chat.