Website Usability: How much information is too much information?

Face it... people don't like to read web sites. They arrive at your web-site and want to know, immediately:

• what do you do? 
• Why should they select you?
• how should I interact with you?

The industry says this information is consumed within 8-12 seconds.

For many site owners, there is an innate need to impart all of their company history, philosophy, processes and...   often right there in one large content-dump on the homepage. Thus a great divide exists between what is wanted by the visitors and what is provided by the site owner.  This divide is easily resolved by the reader... click... gone.

Clearly less is more - far less in some instances.

To the site owner, we recommend that you have your clients and peers visit your site and let them tell YOU what it is that "they" think you do. We have heard people clearly ask - "So what is it they really do?" The site owner would retort, well read it and you will  know. BUT that's the point, no one has time or desire or motivation to read it.  And worse, the content continues on and on way down... scroll down and down...     and that is another thing people won't do...  they won't scroll.

Your web site should be "mostly" presented above the fold (viewed on the browser without scrolling). We like images and flash - yet keep this to a minimum. Use the HTML H1 and H2 tags for  your main sentence and secondary support sentence. These two  tags - which are valuable for SEO (search engine ranking optimization) should present your headlines. It should scream - "This is who we are, this is what we do!"

Then continue with a well written/tight content paragraph, telling the visitor more about your company product/service. This informative paragraph should support your headlines and tell the visitor: "why chose us". 

Finally - the biggest thing missing from web sites - how do we contact you?  This is called the "call to action". What do you want your visitor to do - what action should they take? Don't be afraid - ask them to contact you, buy something or...

Having a "learn more" action is also permissible, which takes the visitor deeper into your site. The reader has granted you permission to provide more details. We recommend that this page should be more in-depth yet not a novel.  And include your call to action. Every page should have a call to action.

Keep it simple and reap the rewards.