Why Simplicity?

As of this evening I’ve reviewed 21 blogs with a focus on heightening simplicity and reducing clutter. It has been a privilege to interact with a wide variety of interesting bloggers and to survey the results of the changes.

When receiving feedback I was occasionally asked why I had suggested the removal of a certain element. This was useful as it forced me to encapsulate the rationale behind web simplicity in a few short words.

I thought it would be worth reproducing their essence here, particularly for those who wanted a little more background to the suggestions in their reviews.

I work part-time at a bakery. We regularly put taster boxes of products we’d like to sell on the bakery counter. Today, the product was sweet, iced buns. I placed the box of bun pieces on the counter and surrounded the box with buns, so that customers could try the product and grab a bun immediately if they decided they liked it.

A few hours passed and the bun pieces remained untouched. This is a product which usually flies off the counter, so it seemed strange to me. I stopped to think: “What is different about the way I’ve presented them today, as opposed to what I usually do?”

I removed the wrapped sweet buns from around the taster box and left the box alone, surrounded only by clear counter-space. The rest of the counter was now empty, except for that one small box.

Guess what? The box emptied in under an hour.

Your readers, like customers at a shop, only have so much attention to give. If you present them with less, they have more attention to give each element. Less social media icons means more attention given to those you do have. Fewer elements in your sidebar mean more attention given to the essential elements that remain.

For me, web minimalism and simplicity mean emphasizing what is essential and important to your readers. Every non-essential or unimportant element you remove is one step towards doing just that.