Years ago I worked as a freelance video producer for Census 2000. We made videos for communities that were less likely to participate in the census.
We’d produce, say, a 10-minute video. Then we’d cut the video to five. After that we might even for try a three-minute cut.
It could be painful. Many excellent pieces of video ended up on the digital version of the cutting room floor.
But it was a great exercise. It forced us to cut all the nice-to-haves and zero in on the must-haves.
It turns out, however, that that's not how our brain likes to operate.
Recent research finds that when we’re faced with a problem, our brain’s default setting is to add rather than subtract elements. (Read more about this fascinating study.)
We usually don’t even think about subtracting something, even if it will yield a better solution.
You'll see this principle at work on many websites.
Copy-heavy pages sag under the weight of sentences and paragraphs that go on and on.
Sections blur as they sprout new pages and subsections willy-nilly because we-have-to-have-something-on-the-site-about [your choice].
And layers of long outdated content that haven’t seen a pair of human eyes for years sink into the gloomy depths of a site that becomes more archive-like every day.
(Side note: Did you know the more data and content your website holds the more it pollutes?)
Luckily, there’s an easy if time-consuming fix. I call it a website audit, which is a list of every page, its content and how it links to other pages.
Once you know what’s on your site you can choose what to keep and what to lose.
Think of how satisfied you feel when you organize a closet or a drawer.
Wouldn’t it feel great to feel the same way about your website?
Are you ready? Get your Marie Kondo on and let’s talk!
P.S. Know someone whose site would cry out for help if only it could? Forward this email and blame it on Marie.
