While meeting with a client today concerning the design of their new website, the maxim “keep it simple” was broached with respect to providing a clear, unambiguous message about the service the client is offering. The invocation of this principle by our client brought to mind a recent article on Smashing Magazine’s website concerning a recent trend in web design: treating a website’s home page like a billboard.
Setting aside SEO implications for the moment, from an aesthetic perspective I wholeheartedly embrace the notion of keeping things simple. However, as I began to muse on the notion of simplicity in terms of how a company might condense its service offerings to a pithy phrase or sentence, I realized the admonition to “keep it simple” isn’t necessarily simple to accomplish.
In particular, while an overarching simple message is quick and to the point, it can also be limiting in the sense that when reducing the complex to the simple an awful lot can get lost in the translation.
As we design, develop and implement this new website, it will be interesting to see how the “keep it simple/billboard” approach to the home page design pays off for our clients.