Website clutter creates poor usability.  People almost always think that more is better, including the junk!     By John Bolduan RealWebMarketing.com

Human beings are known throughout the natural world as the creatures who collect things and never get rid of them. The animals marvel at our ability hang on to the least important object as if it was a diamond. The animals don't do this like we do. They store enough of what they need but don't amass stuff. We do it to the point where we need a third garage stall (guilty), not for another car, but for "stuff". It's not that any of us have the most important things to stow away, we just can't let go! It's this aspect of clutter that wrecks some websites too. As in the physical world, the web has a lot of clutter and we all need to deal ruthlessly with it. 

Just like taking out the trash or getting rid of years of accumulated junk, we all should clear somewhere between 30-50% of the links, doorways, ads, banners, pop-ups, graphics from our websites. You may say that you can't because all of those links and stuff is completely necessary. I would say that it's not. I have a competitor that has so much junk on the front page of his site that it's actually hard to recognize what they want you to do! Do they want to give you information or direct you to buy something, who knows? 

How to eliminate website clutter.

• Organize the choices on your website better. 

  Make it so people can get to what they want to see within 2 to 3 clicks from anywhere. Anything more than that probably has a site structure that leads to website clutter. For a start, clean up that home page to be a focused place where there are no more than two objectives you would like people to accomplish while online. More things to click means more confusion.

• Kill the stuff that gets little traffic or is just bad. 

  This is not hard to understand. Delete the pages or links that are ineffective and take away from your main goal for visitors to your website.

• Kill the banner ads.

  I would hope you're not doing this poor technique anymore, but if you are, stop doing it now. People hate this garbage for many different reasons. It's the kind of website clutter that reduces focus.

• Kill the ads from Google or other sources.

  A new wrinkle in ads is Google Adsense which places Google ads on your site and you get some credit back from Google if your already an Adwords customer. This also reduces your website focus and clarity. What tiny benefit you get from this, will be outdistanced by visitors leaving your site or seeing you as a confusing mess.

• Kill the animated graphics.

  Animated graphics or images with no real purpose stink. I hate those little animated images that show all sorts of cute little antics. unless they have a very specific purpose. Are you trying to be cute, or help someone find what they need? Decide which is more important to you.

Take a lesson from Google.

I remember when Google first came out. I thought that it looked kind of silly. How could a search engine be any good with just one little line for search? It didn't have all that portal junk that everyone else had like Yahoo. Well, after using it just a few times it became the search engine of choice. That's because what was under the hood was more important than a flashy or "complete" front-end. We could all use a lesson on usability from Google. 

Yes, it's true that human nature tends to move in the direction of over complication, clutter and government programs. But we don't have to obey this flaw in our nature. Fight to keep your website free of clutter! As a result, you'll find more sales and customer satisfaction.