Simplicity Works

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Forget about the flash intro page. Think twice before adding a chat room to your online baby clothes store. Skip the rainbow colored background that clashes with the font colors. The quintessential rule of e-business is: the simpler, the better.

If you add a cornucopia of unimportant information that you think is cool, think how many precious minutes your customers will waste digging around your pages for stuff that isn’t really important. That's bad business.

In fact, customers are beginning to complain that sites are much too complicated. This is the result of a study done by the Chicago-based Information Resources, Inc. in its survey of 7,900 shoppers. They found that most packaged goods manufacturers are providing features that visitors don't want. In attempting to do too much and be everything to the customer, the marketing and sales objectives fail.

The study also showed that top brand marketers in beauty care, food, and household supplies are wasting money on such features as games and chat. Of the sites included in the sample, 38% featured games, yet just 12% of shoppers say they want them. In a reverse situation, 74% of the shoppers say that they are willing to provide feedback online, but only 38% of sites ask for it.

So how do you incorporate efficiency and simplicity in your site? Danielle Zilliox, in her book "The Get Started Guide to E-commerce" offers a number of tips in creating sites that don't waste a customer's precious time:

1. When in doubt, leave it out!
   Simplicity and clarity helps visitors find things with a minimum of fuss; they also help emphasize the information that you do provide. Be minimalist. Unless there is "present and clear necessity" for one element, don't include it in your page. If you can't explain to yourself why that graphic is important, then probably it's not. Chuck it.
    
2. Use the three-click rule as the guiding formula of your website's overall structure.
   If you can't decide whether the site is self-explanatory enough, use the "three-click rule." All customers should be able to find the data they need within three clicks of having entered the site. Customers should be able to dash in, grab what they need, and dash away again without becoming hopelessly lost. Although four necessary clicks for some links would hardly be a disaster, you still want to be as close to the ideal as possible.
    
3. Have a clear structure.
   Unless you provide some kind of organization to your site users, they can become lost in a tangle of disconnected screens. Chaos is certainly not the path to success! Everything should be arranged in an orderly manner, and it should always provide enough information to answer these three questions: What type of site is this? What kinds of information can I find here? How do I contact this company?
    
4. Build an interactive store.
   Don't treat your website as a standard catalog or brochure that wastes your singular opportunity to build an interactive store. Without exception, the best websites are those that allow a certain degree of interaction between the merchant and the customer. Even if the complexity of mass customization is currently beyond your capacity, be sure to include at least some opportunity for customer involvement - even if it's only an e-mail address for feedback.

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