Simplify everything.

Your website

Let's start here, because it's where everything lands, and where excess shows up fastest.

Look at the people who think of nothing but performance

One exercise before anything else. Open the websites of technology companies that genuinely work: software vendors, the large start-ups.

You won't find twelve-item menus, animations everywhere, or nested sections. One promise, one action, one proof. That's it.

This isn't an aesthetic choice, and that's the part to pay attention to. These companies are obsessed with performance. They measure every element, and when you measure everything, most things don't survive the review. What's left at the end looks like restraint. It's actually pruning.

Their mindset is this: get to the essential first, discuss the rest afterwards. Most companies do exactly the opposite.

The menus people get lost in

I see outrageous menus. Seven, eight, nine items, submenus, sometimes sub-sub-pages.

The reasoning behind it is always well meant: offer choice, show everything you can do, make sure nobody misses anything. The result is the opposite. People get lost, and when people get lost they don't search, they leave.

And you can nearly always group things. You have blog posts? One tab is enough, with filters or categories inside. Whoever is searching will find. Whoever is merely curious will browse. Nobody needs a three-level tree.

I'm thinking of those firms, accountants, consultancies, that pile up dozens of very specialised pages. The content exists, it's sometimes good, and it's unreadable because there's no hierarchy. You get volume and no effectiveness.

Don't take this literally

I'm not saying you need two pages. That would be as foolish as the opposite excess.

• An online shop needs a page per product, obviously.
• A tutorial site needs its tutorials, that's the whole point of it.
• A well-fed blog is an asset, provided it's filed simply.

What I am saying is to ask the question page by page: is this one relevant, can it be merged with another, does it serve anyone? The mindset first, the rule second.

And like everything I write here, these are generalities. None of it replaces verification. Put measurement in place, look at which pages actually get opened and which never do. The numbers will settle it better than I can, and certainly better than your instinct.

Design, and the exception that proves it

Social feeds are full of magnificent, animated, virtuoso websites. They're beautiful. And most of the time they have nothing to do with you.

Because design isn't your business. You sell a service, an intervention, a skill. The site exists so someone understands and gets in touch, not to impress a peer.

There is a genuine exception and it deserves naming: brands whose experience is the product. Luxury, high-end automotive, houses where the emotion is part of what you buy. There, visual craft is entirely justified, because it carries the value.

For everyone else, the most beautiful site in the world is useless if it can't be understood in three seconds.

And the writing

Same logic, and it's more demanding than it looks.

The line is usually attributed to Pascal: “I have written you a long letter because I did not have time to write a short one.” Everything is in there. Sprawling is easy, restful even. Condensing requires knowing what you mean.

A long text that hasn't been reworked isn't generous, it's lazy. It shifts the sorting onto the reader, and the reader won't do it. This is the same subject as your site is not a library, which is why I'm coming back to it.

The barest websites on the internet belong to the companies most obsessed with results. That's not a coincidence, it's a consequence.

Your posts

Second area, and probably where complexity costs the most. It doesn't cost money: it costs months during which nothing ships.

Studio syndrome

Here's the blocker I meet most often, and it costs very capable businesses years.

“We'd like to do videos, but we'd need a studio.” Or a videographer. Or a decent microphone. Or a proper backdrop. Or to wait until the premises are redone. The content is postponed indefinitely in the name of a production standard that never arrives.

And it's false. Today, any business owner has a camera in their pocket that films better than professional gear from ten years ago.

• Your phone: you already have it, and it's more than enough.
• A wireless lapel mic: around fifty euros.
• A tripod: around twenty.
• A light, if you film indoors: the same order of magnitude.

You set it up, you film, you publish. There's nothing else to buy, and above all nothing else to wait for.

Why a videographer doesn't solve it

I'm about to say something that could sound harsh, so let me be clear: video professionals do exemplary work, and I'm not disparaging them at all.

The issue isn't skill, it's volume.

Publishing on social media is a game of quantity and consistency. You commission a pack of ten videos, which is already very good, and it will never be enough. Ten videos is two months. Then what? You won't sustain the rhythm at professional rates, nobody can.

The videographer has a place, and it's elsewhere: the flagship film, the presentation piece, the one reused for three years in advertising, in spots, in cinemas. There, the budget makes sense because the video lasts.

A video meant to last, you commission. A video meant to feed the feed, you make yourself. It's a question of balance, not contempt.

Reach doesn't depend on production quality

This needs saying plainly, because you're often told the opposite.

What makes a video travel is the subject, the first second, and publishing regularly. Not the grade, not the backdrop, not the depth of field. A flawless video nobody cares about goes nowhere, and a rough one that lands travels perfectly well.

The podcast studio is the trend of the moment. It's comfortable, it looks good, and above all it's an excellent way to push your first post back six months. The day you publish every week without thinking about it, equipping yourself becomes a good idea. Not before.

And beware the vanity trap: a video being seen doesn't mean it's working for you. Four million views and zero customers happens, and I wrote a whole article about it.

It gets me too

Let's be honest: I'm not above this.

As I discover tools, formats and content ideas, I naturally tend to complicate. To want a more crafted edit, a cleverer setup, an idea more original than yesterday's.

And every time the conclusion is the same: it wasn't necessary. What works is simpler than what I had planned, and it ships faster.

The studio isn't what you're missing. It's what you use in order not to start.

Your offer

Now the pillar I find most misunderstood. The site is visible, the posts are visible, the offer isn't. And yet it decides what the other two produce.

The value ladder, and the first rung

On to what matters most, and what's least understood.

A customer journey is a ladder. At the bottom, someone who doesn't know you. At the top, a loyal client who trusts you with their important work. In between, rungs.

And as on any ladder, the first rung is always the hardest. It's the one where you have to lift your foot, decide, commit while knowing nothing.

So the job is simple to state: make that first rung as low as you possibly can. No fourteen-field form, no commitment, no complicated quote. An appointment, a conversation, a first step that costs nothing.

Everything else happens afterwards, and happens in conversation. It's a subject in its own right, and I'll devote an article to it.

One single entry point

Take a deliberately hard case: an accountancy firm.

Complex trade, dozens of different engagements, very varied clients, long journey. The temptation is obvious: one offer per engagement, one page per case, one form per service.

Do the opposite. One door. One form, one appointment. The person gets in touch, you talk, and it's during that conversation that you steer them to the right engagement.

Because even someone who knows why they came gets lost in front of too many doors. They hesitate, they wonder whether they picked the right one, and often they don't pick at all. That's exactly the principle of one door and one objective, applied to your offer rather than to a page.

Look at how digital products and start-ups do it: never more than two or three offers, and usually only one foregrounded. That isn't commercial poverty, that's accumulated experience.

It isn't your trade being simplified

Essential nuance, otherwise everything above becomes dangerous.

I'm not telling you to shrink your business. I'm telling you to simplify how it presents itself. Digital is packaging. Nothing more, and that's already a great deal.

My own case illustrates it. I build business software, organisational tools, management systems for clients who trust me with that. It's an important part of what I do, and sometimes the most useful.

You'll see almost none of it on my site. Not out of secrecy: because someone discovering my work has no reason to understand what it involves, and explaining it upfront would scatter them. My entry point is websites and ongoing support. Those who dig find the rest, and we talk about it then.

If your presentation is confusing, people won't find you comprehensive, they'll find you vague. And vague doesn't recover.

The first rung is always the hardest to climb. Your job is to make it nearly flat.

Your campaigns

Last area before the recap, and the only one where the mistake is paid for in cash, from the first month.

Ten euros across five channels produces nothing

In advertising, complexity costs money immediately, which at least has the merit of making the problem visible.

The reflex is to spread out: a bit of Google, a bit of Meta, a bit of TikTok, so as not to miss anything. The result is a budget in crumbs, and no crumb reaches the volume needed to produce anything usable.

Fifty euros a day on one channel gives you an answer. Ten euros across five gives you noise, and on top of that you won't even know where the few contacts came from.

One channel. Confirm it works. Amplify. And only then open the next one. That's the first principle of any advertising budget that holds up.

A campaign, a few creatives, and off you go

The same excess shows up in the setup. Nested structures, dozens of variants, crossed audiences, before anyone knows whether the message interests a single person.

At the start you need very little: a clear message, a few creatives, a landing page that keeps the promise. That's all. At least you'll know what you're testing.

Sophistication has its place once growth is there, once volumes justify it and you already know what works. Not before.

Test, but keep control

Careful not to have me say the opposite: you must test. Several messages, several hooks, several journeys. That's how you learn, and I say it often enough.

What to avoid is reaching the point where nobody understands what's happening any more. When everything moves at once, you dilute the budget, you no longer know where results came from, and you can't usefully correct anything.

One variable at a time. It's slower over a week, and much faster over six months.

A scattered campaign tests nothing. It buys the right not to know.

The three pillars

Four areas, but only three pillars. Here's how I file all of it when someone asks me where to begin.

A three-legged table

Let's step back, because those four areas are really only three.

• The site: the surface, where everything lands.
• The traffic: your posts and your campaigns, what brings people.
• The offer: what turns a visitor into a customer.

Three legs, and a table resting on them. Remove one and it all collapses. And above all: a table leg doesn't need to be elaborate, it needs to hold.

You can decorate it, carve it, spend a considerable amount of time on it. None of that changes its function. Its success is judged on one thing: is the table level.

It's the same idea as the bodywork, the engine and the fuel, seen from another angle. Three elements, none optional, none improved by being complicated.

What it changes in your decisions

The point of this framework isn't decorative, it's practical. Faced with any project, it lets you ask the only good question: which of the three legs is shortest?

Rebuilding a magnificent site when nobody comes is pointless. Buying traffic when the site doesn't convert amounts to pouring water into a sieve. Polishing an offer nobody sees achieves nothing either.

You strengthen the shortest leg, then you ask the question again. Nothing else.

A table leg doesn't need to be elaborate. It needs to hold, and to be the same height as the other two.

The noise

One thing left to explain: why none of this is a matter of taste.

There is too much of everything

Here's the underlying reason, the one that makes all of the above non-negotiable.

Digital is saturated. Your customer receives dozens of messages a day, ads everywhere, endless notifications. They don't grant you their attention, they take it away from something else for a few seconds.

In that context, clarity isn't a nicety, it's a condition of entry. Anything that isn't immediately legible cuts no path at all. It isn't even rejected: it's simply absorbed by the surrounding noise.

And that holds at every level, from your menu to the first sentence of your offer. Every extra thing makes the others harder to hear.

Pragmatism isn't a pose

This is exactly what I call plain farmer's common sense: do what serves, remove the rest, and keep it going over time.

It's neither modesty nor austerity. It's the observation that a heavy setup is hard to correct, hard to measure and hard to evolve. Whereas a simple one can be adjusted in an afternoon.

You'll notice that most people who over-complicate don't do it out of ambition. They do it because deciding requires knowing, and because nobody ever showed them what it costs.

Where to start

One thing per pillar, this week. No more, or you've just recreated the problem:

• open your menu and remove one item that settles no question for a customer;
• film a video on your phone, today, without buying anything;
• write your offer in one sentence and have someone outside the trade read it;
• cut your weakest ad channel and move that budget onto the best one;
• ask which of your three legs is shortest, and work only on that one.

None of that requires budget. It requires deciding, which is considerably harder.

Simplifying isn't doing less. It's stopping doing what serves nobody.

If you'd like to work out which of your three pillars is holding up worst, write to me. It's usually the shortest and most useful conversation you can have.