Your website is not a library.

This line, often attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, captures in a handful of words what I try to do on every project. The simpler, the better. It's not laziness, it's the opposite: simplifying takes far more work than piling things on.

Your website is not a library

The problem comes up again and again. You want to show everything: your strategy, your story, your fifteen services, your values, your team, all the content you've ever produced. So you pile it on. Menus, submenus, pages, paragraphs that never end.

But your website is not a library where visitors come to read it all. Nobody reads a fifteen-line paragraph, especially on a phone. It's unreadable, and unreadable means abandoned. Design plays a part, but even the most beautiful site drowns if it tries to say everything at once.

A website is a first date

Your website has one job: to convince someone to contact you, to want to work with you. One. It's not there to prove you know everything. It's there to make people want you.

Picture a first date. Across from you, someone who never stops talking, who pours out their whole life, frantically, in endless sentences, jumping from one topic to the next. Does that appeal to you? No. It's exhausting, it's off-putting. You don't call back. No second date.

A website that talks too much does exactly that. The visitor doesn't think “how impressive.” They close the tab. No second visit. So say less, but say it well: a clear promise, a bit of proof, an obvious way to reach you. That's what draws people in.

Got a lot to say? Not here

“But my business is specific, I have a lot to explain.” Maybe. It changes nothing.

Take an accountant. A prospect who hasn't signed yet doesn't need you to spell out the laws, the regulations and the fine print. They need to understand one thing: how you work, and whether they can trust you. The rest, you'll explain once they're a client.

Everything you have to say has a place, just not on the homepage. A blog, yes, like the article you're reading: if a topic interests you, I share my method and my thoughts. But I chose to write it, it's here for the curious who came looking for it. I never put it front and center as the main material at the entrance of the site.

The basic rule is simple: your key pages must be crystal clear and easy to digest. Everything else, you break it up, you set it aside, you make it optional.

Careful, I'm not handing you a rigid rule. There are nuances, exceptions, trades where you need to explain more. You have to think, not apply a recipe. But when in doubt, the answer is always the same, and it's pure common sense: simplify. Cut. A site that says one thing clearly always beats a site that says ten in a fog.