Should your website be busy or uncluttered? Using “push verse pull” to find out – Part Two

This series of posts seeks to help website owners understand whether or not their site should be busy or uncluttered, based on the difference between “push” and “pull”.

A website that “pushes” is trying to get the user who visits it to do something specific, it tends to take the initiative. A website that “pulls” is trying to give the user more initiative, offering multiple ways for the user to extract whatever they can from the site.

We’ll have a look at some of the webs most popular sites to see push and pull mechanics in action in our next post.

Before doing so, it’ll be useful to establish some of the general characteristics of each approach.

Should your website be busy or uncluttered? Using Push v Pull to find out – Part One

I get a lot of clients who are uncertain as to whether their website should be busy or simple. A busy looking site is one that has a lot of features and options, to the point where it might even look cluttered. A simple looking site in contrast has relatively few options, it has a relatively uncluttered look and feel.

Most of us readily understand that a large part of the answer comes down to the purpose of the site. But with probably more than 90% of websites built by professional development firms like Imagine Global Communications being commercial in nature, we’ll assume that the website is supposed to sell something. That something may be information, product, or services, but whatever it is, the website is there to sell it.

A short history of Search Engine Optimisation – Part Four (Final)

Its now 2009, the early days of the WWW are long gone and largely forgotten. Less than 1 in 10 of the current online population were around back then. Search engines are starting to count the size of their index in trillions, and the best of them use increasingly complex formula and logic in producing search results lists.

Despite this, the heady days in the late 90s when SEO experts could make a few specific changes to a client website and see them rise to the top of various search engines results lists have not been forgotten by all. I regularly come across clients, business consultants, advertising agencies, and most eyebrow-raising of all, well established SEO companies, who still believe that all they need to do to optimise their website is stuff their keywords tag with 300 search terms. This, despite the fact that such practice is pretty close to a complete waste of time.