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Building Web Warrior Tools: A war on clutter
Glen Stansberry, author of the sublime productivity blog LifeDev, recently started a new retail website that sells ebooks on web and life issues. After the site launched, I asked if he could write a piece for Unclutterer reflecting on this process and how he kept the site free of clutter. (It’s beautiful!) He thankfully accepted, and below are his informative words on designing clean websites. Thank you, Glen, for joining us today on Unclutterer.
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.” — Albert Einstein
While building the Web Warrior Tools site, my business partner Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and I told our very talented designer that the one thing we wanted most was the site’s layout to be as simple as possible.
We hate sites with clutter.
Typical Shopping Sites Love Clutter
The ebook industry isn’t known for elegant design or user-friendly websites. Many sites selling ebooks have gaudy landing pages that look like they’re selling snake oil. Huge headers, lots of exclamation points, flashing text… ugh. We wanted to buck the trend of the “typical” ebook-selling site, and focus on aesthetics instead of flashy copy.
We quickly learned, however, that building a simple web site was kind of tricky, especially for an ecommerce site. Ecommerce sites (or sites that sell goods online) have a reputation for clutter-filled layouts. The common practice is to cram as many products on a page, hoping that the user will buy something because of all the products displayed. Sort of a spray-n-pray approach. It kind of makes online shopping a stressful event, as there are just so many things that grab your attention on the page.
Doing More with Less
Providing lots of information in a simple, clutter-free manner isn’t an easy task. Each link, each picture, each word has to be weighed carefully. If you go to the Web Warrior Tools homepage you’ll see that there isn’t much of a sales copy. We have one line of three short sentences. We only have 4 categories of ebooks, and we feature a single ebook on our homepage.
Our landing pages for each ebook don’t have a ton of information and a long sales copy. Just a few succinct sentences about what the ebook is about. We add some quick facts about the author and the ebook, and make a major point of the page the preview of the ebook. We think it’s enough information for the buyer to make an informed decision, and yet not enough to make the experience stressful.
Simplifying is a Process
By no means is the site perfect yet. We’re always going to be modifying the layout of the Web site to make things simpler, and more aesthetically pleasing. In fact, we’ve been told that our layout is a bit too simple, that it doesn’t provide enough information about what Web Warrior Tools is. So we’ll be changing the homepage slightly in the near future. But the simplicity will always remain.
We believe that building a service that is easy to use and doesn’t frustrate visitors is ultimately going to be more successful, and bring back repeat buyers. It adds a level of trust and credibility to our brand. People will refer our ebooks to friends because we care about their experience using our site.
Uncluttering goes farther than just a home office. It’s important in site designs, and especially sites that have a lot of information. Giving just enough information to inform a customer, but not enough to overwhelm him, is a fine art and one that we’re still learning. But taking the time to Unclutter our site is going to pay off in the long run. People want simple solutions.
12 comments posted
Posted by Shanel Yang - 06/13/2008
Very useful information! I recently heard of a study that confirmed that supermarket shoppers are overwhelmed by too many choices. Using salad dressings (if my memory serves me), they conducted experiments that proved fewer choices in the display resulted in more purchases. The researchers concluded that modern consumers, when overwhelmed by too many choices and too much information, rather than making the wrong choice, or taking the time to learn which product is best for them, simply passed on the whole decision.
Posted by Joseph Z - 06/13/2008
As someone who works on 2 e-commerce sites, I found this article very interesting. Glen touched on a big issue in e-commerce, getting as many items “above the fold” as possible. I’ve heard it said that consumers don’t like to scroll, that they’ll only spend a certain amount of time on a page, etc. When you sell a lot of products, having less clutter (as long as you don’t define products as clutter) helps customers to see what you sell.
I admire Glen’s approach and hope that I can use it too in the future
Posted by allen - 06/13/2008
I really appreciated the part where the author was honest about the fact that they don’t have it perfect yet, that they’re still trying, that they’re still evolving the look.
Posted by Egirlrocks - 06/13/2008
I just visted your site and I’d like to say: “Bravo!” The colors are good and the layout is logical and pleasing to the eye (at least my eye). For the same reasons I admire how you’ve built your site, I also use an internet portal called GNET.COM (http://www.gnet.com). There are no obnoxious ads or pop ups, just a few simple advertiser links and lots of links to all the popular search engines. You do have to sign up but they don’t send you junk emails or sell their lists. You can also add a small list of your own faves. Check it out!
Posted by goodsnake - 06/13/2008
If your site truly wanted to be uncluttered, you would eliminate the categories that you no longer produce content for and eliminate the long list of ads that clutter my vision on your site.
Posted by Erin Doland - 06/13/2008
@goodsnake — Is your dig at Unclutterer or Web Warrior Tools? If it’s at us, be a little more clear so that our guest writer doesn’t think that you’re being inconsiderate to someone who has given freely of his time to produce content as a favor for us and our readers.
Also, if you’re referring to Unclutterer … you don’t get rid of organization categories if they still have content in them. That’s poor data management. The content exists, so it is filed accordingly. Just because you haven’t put anything in your 2006 tax files since 2006 doesn’t mean you get rid of that file. Your reasoning is illogical. Plus, if someone has a link to a category page, it would break the link if we got rid of the category. Broken links are more clutter than categories full of data.
Secondly, we pay for our server through ad revenue, so the advertisements aren’t going anywhere. You get content for FREE thanks to our advertisers. If you find them loathsome, then subscribe to our content through a RSS feed that has much fewer ads in it.
Posted by gumnos - 06/14/2008
@Erin@goodsnake
Perhaps if active categories were listed with an “Older content” link, this sub-page could contain categories that haven’t seen authored-love in a while. This might also be useful to you as content-creators — “Hmm…we haven’t done an article about Travel in a while. Maybe that would make a good topic for our next article”.
Using your “2006 taxes” as an example, yes, I have my 2006 taxes around still, but they’re in my “important stuff to keep around archivally” filebox rather than my “actively use month-to-month” filebox.
Yes, in a way, adverts are clutter to most folks, but if you need them to keep the site profitable, then they have a purpose and aren’t just there as clutter.
Posted by Erin Doland - 06/14/2008
@gumnos — We determine our content based on user input … such as with the responses from the Getting to Know You post and from questions that are submitted to us on the Contact Page. We also analyze the data from category click throughs and Google searches. We track what visitors to our site are reading. (Plus we follow the news and trends to see if there are subjects we’ve never addressed but will be of interest.)
If we were to write content simply based off of what we haven’t addressed in a while it wouldn’t correlate to what users want to read — often it means that what we wrote about initially just wasn’t of any interest to our readers. My thoughts on this matter are that we want to serve our readers, not repeatedly produce irrelevant content out of habit.
Also, we won’t be creating subcategories of content. Either content is current or it is part of our archive. Data can’t be MORE archived. Either it is in the archive or it’s not.
We are in the process of creating more categories. We won’t be getting rid of any categories, but we will be adding to them. We think it’s weird that we don’t have a category for books or children, for instance. So, look for these new categories to be rolled out this summer.
Posted by ramenrentresumes.com - 06/14/2008
It’s important to keep things simple visually, and with content. Simple content that’s to the point works best!!
Posted by productevangelist - 06/14/2008
The simpler the better! The easier a site is to navigate the more efficient it is for the user. I personally detest navigating through sites with all the unnecessary flashing ads, big banners,etc. I commend you for deliberately setting out to create a website that is user friendly and most importantly, simple!
Posted by Glen Stansberry - 06/16/2008
Thanks for the great comments guys! It’s always nice to hear that people agree with your instincts in web design.
Posted by Erika - 06/16/2008
You should check out some of Jakob Nielsen’s work on web usability and best practices.
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