This has many applications for Small Business Webmasters. It applies to everything from design principles, to site organization, to site features, to bells and whistles, to the services you offer as a webmaster.

We have a rule for this:

If it doesn’t increase revenue in a measurable way for the client, then more isn’t better.

In fact, if it fails to meet that test, then more is WORSE for a small business website. And more very often costs more, but returns little or nothing.

Every feature you add to a site comes with a burden of upkeep and maintenance. So adding things just because you CAN, is not a good enough reason. Showing off your latest tricks is not ever part of a wise webmaster’s game plan.

Many bells and whistles come with a price of decreased compatibility, lowered search engine friendliness, and an exponential increase in initial costs which cannot be justified by the corresponding increase in ROI – if there is one at all. In fact, the decreased compatibility and lowered search engine friendliness can completely obliterate any positive ROI for many situations. Weight it carefully in dollars and cents, inform the client of your conclusions. They may still choose to waste their money, but if they do, it will be an informed choice, and not something they wandered into because you failed to protect their interests.

The same principles apply to your own business. Often, consolidating the kind of services you offer can allow you to produce better, and more cost effective services, at a higher profit. This is one of the keys to our success. We pay attention to the things that are both a better deal for the client, and more profitable to us, and we then revise our services so more things fit that criteria.

We have reduced the site types we deal with on more than one occasion, when we did an analysis of the changing industry, and our changing skill levels, and realized that a single line of services was taking more time, and causing more unnecessary cost for the client. Since they also had better alternatives, and keeping a bad choice open just so the client could choose a bad choice, is just not a smart business decision, we have closed down service lines on mulitple occasions based on what was in our best interests, and in the best interest of the client.

We have also reduced some of the other items we work with, when we found one method that outperformed every time. There simply was no justifiable reason to continue to offer less productive options. See, for many things, you can’t charge more for an inefficient item, the market won’t bear it. So YOU take the hit in productivity. For many kinds of services, you can streamline a system with one service provider, while others will cost you in features that are not present, functions that are disabled, and processes that do not reliably work within those service environments. Hosting is a BIG one here. The same process can take 10 minutes on one host, and two hours on another, just due to fussy things that don’t work as expected. We’ve had the difference be as much as 10 hours, on a simple dynamic site install, between one host and another! It WAS a simple process on one, but anything but on the other.

Consider carefully what is NEEDED, to keep your business sustainable, and for the client, consider what they NEED, to grow their business in the most cost effective manner. Sometimes you have to give up choices, but often, when you condense to LESS, you end up with MORE, in time, earnings, predictability, and performance.

That is worth putting some thought into.

“I want a clean and simple looking website.” Another thing they say, but which means different things to different people. I’ve had dozens of clients say this, and you never quite know WHAT they mean by it. Here are some translations:

1. I want lots of white space.

2. I want a design with a white background and very simple accents.

3. I want a design with sharp edges, no shadows, no background graphics.

4. I want a design that has very little navigation.

Now, usually they mean just one of those things, sometimes more than one. But every client means something different when they say it, and if you assume they mean the same thing you do, you’ll strike out on the first attempt.

A clean design means their interpretation of order and simplicity. Sometimes that conflicts with the needs of their site – it is increasingly common to have a client who needs an incredibly complex site with multi-layers, to want only a single navigation bar, or for someone with a combination infosite and cart to want a two column layout with big boxes and large text. They simply do not realize how much space things take, and that if you want to put hundreds of things into a site, you have to have a place to put it all.

Sometimes good site organization, using multiple menus in uncluttered ways for sites with a lot of content is the key to making it appear simpler than it really is.

Achieving a “clean” look, then, becomes a blend of understanding what the client means, and working with their needs to balance what they want, with what they actually need.

It ain’t always easy… But it is usually possible to achieve a satisfactory result.

“I just want a simple website.” They almost all say that. But they rarely mean it. This is not a negative thing against clients, rather, just an attempt to explain one of the psychological oddities you run into over and over as a webmaster. Understanding this can help you gauge a client’s needs more accurately, and to not make assumptions that will cause you to get it wrong.

They say it because:

1. They don’t understand what they really need to promote their business. Many business owners still think they just need one page.

2. They want to make sure you understand that it is a small budget project. Almost a subconscious manipulation tactic, if they can make you believe they only need something simple, maybe you won’t charge a lot. They tend to say this even when what they need is really very complex.

3. It looks simple because many other sites have it. They have no way of knowing what went into those other sites, or how complex many things really are. “Simple” to them means that they see it enough that they think that it has to be commonly and cheaply available – though this is often not true online.

So when a client comes to you and says, “I really just need a SIMPLE little website.”, don’t start pricing and planning until you find out what they really need, and do some education about what works online, and what does not.

Because almost every client says it – but only a small fraction actually know whether they mean what they say or not.