When designing pages for your website, keeping it simple is harder than it sounds. Providing options for website visitors is a good idea, but providing too many options is a bad idea. Why? Study after study confirms that people draw conclusions about a website within a few seconds and then quickly decide to remain or exit your site. That gives you a mere three seconds to communicate what you do and how you provide benefits to your site visitor. The more cluttered your website, the harder a visitor has to work to find what they’re looking for.

Think of your website pages as a storefront. Have you ever looked at a storefront and tried to figure out what the store was selling? We all have. What determines your decision to enter the store or walk away? Your decision is likely based on whether or not the storefront provides you with a positive emotional reaction within a few seconds of gazing through the window.

The best way to keep your website pages simple is to understand your audiences so well that you provide what they need, in the format they need it in, within three seconds. According to Nielsen Norman Group, a cluttered webpage lowers the perceived value of the organization. Clutter and disorganized content suggest a lack of attention to detail, or an inability to distill information into a meaningful summary that, people assume, reflects the overall character of the business.

By keeping your website design simple, and designing your site around the content your audiences need, you increase the likelihood of visitor interaction. The more people interact with your website, the more they’ll transact with your business.