"Nobody Can Hear You When You're Talking So Loud"
Something I've learned as a parent is that kids have no volume control. Whenever my kids get excited (or air their grievances out to me) they tend to get louder and louder. That's when I lean in and whisper, "Nobody can hear you when you're talking so loud."
The paradox explains itself as they quiet down and sit still so they can hear me better. The lesson is short-lived and repeated way more frequently than I'd like but it's true: the more noise there is, the more we focus on the volume and the message hidden within it gets lost.
Yes, we're still talking about websites.
For websites, the problem isn't speaking too loudly; it's speaking too much. Or if we're being literal, writing too much. Far too often, I see web pages packed with so much information that the important messages get buried under an avalanche of text.
In general, people read websites differently than they read books. Nobody curls up with an About Us page and settles in for a good read. Instead, they are likely looking for something: an answer to a problem, a product, a phone number, reviews.
Therefore, we should expect our readers to skim and look at headings and images instead of reading every single word typed on the page. It's nice to provide plenty of information on the website; you just have to place it in the right spots if you want it to be seen.
Let's see how it's done. But first....
Why Are We Writing So Much?
I can understand why this happens partially because I fight the same tendencies myself.
Think about this:
When we speak in person to someone, we get constant feedback. Someone nods. Someone interjects themselves or looks confused. Someone laughs at a joke we didn't even realize was all that funny. Without thinking about it, we adjust what we say.
However while writing on a website, this feedback loop doesn't exist. So we tend to overcompensate in hopes of being understood by the reader.
Even my own website needs to be trimmed down (again). I believe in the services I offer and I'm passionate about what I do so every detail just feels equally important to me (they're not) and it spills out into excess text. The same way a landscape company might have a bloated services page because they take pride in what their work and worry someone won't realize they offer what they're looking for. Or a daycare owner might write a 1,500 word homepage because they worry a parent won't know that it's a safe and caring place for their kids. We don't mean to overwhelm visitors; we are only trying to reassure them.
There are other reasons why we might be writing too much, aside from the worry of not being thoroughly understood. Perhaps we feel the need to justify our prices or that more words equate to more value. Maybe the empty spaces we leave on our website (which lend to readability by the way) feel incomplete.
From what I've noticed, I think a huge contributing factor is simply trying to provide enough content for a website. A brand new website with so many pages will need plenty of words to fill those pages, right? As a web strategist and designer, I'm here to tell you: it doesn't. A little bit of text, some strong headlines, and good images are plenty to work with.
What About Long Form Content?
Long form absolutely has a place where it's useful. Long form landing pages, educational content, and blog posts (articles) are all great places to provide lots of detail. As a matter of fact, remember how I said I struggle to write less? I love writing blog posts because it gives me more freedom to expand on my ideas.
And if you find yourself wanting to include too many details, those details might work nicely in an FAQ section or as individual blog posts if the topic is complex enough.
Reframe How You Approach Website Copy
Website copy shouldn't be like writing an essay but it's so easy to treat it as such.
Take a homepage for example.
A homepage might not be the page your visitors land on first, but it's designed like it is: it's where visitors form their first impressions of your business as you try to capture their interest.
Let's compare this to how people introduce themselves in person. If I were meeting someone and they introduced themselves by pulling out some presentation-ready index cards and talking nonstop about themselves, well that'd just be weird. In the real world, we usually make a very brief introduction such as our name and maybe another detail such as our relationship to our mutual contact, what department we work in, or what city we traveled from. Something simple. Then what do we do? Well, I smile and nod awkwardly but a more skilled conversationalist would start searching for common ground so they could move on to a more genuine conversation.
And that's exactly what we need to do on our websites.
We need to answer why this information we are providing is relevant to our site visitors in the first place. We also need to determine the intent of each visitor and guide them to the right place.
Your Website Doesn't Need to Say Everything at Once, it Just Needs to Say the Right Thing at the Right Time
One of the most common mistakes I see is trying to answer every possible question on the homepage. Visitors haven't even asked all of those questions yet. In general, a homepage should answer questions like "what website is this?", "what are you selling", "what problems do you solve", or "how is your product or service different from others?"
Naturally, as your visitors start to look at your site, they will navigate to different areas, depending on what questions and thoughts they have next. For example,
About page:
- I'm curious about this person or brand.
Services page:
- What are my options?
- How much will this cost me?
Website footer:
- Where are they located?
- How do I contact them?
- I wonder if they're on TikTok.
The same principle applies throughout the rest of your website.
Note that none of these examples are firmly set rules. Things can change drastically from one business to the next. Take a clothing company, for instance. It would be ridiculous to list every available size on the homepage, right? Now suppose that what sets that clothing company apart is their availability of difficult to find sizes? Now that's homepage-worthy information right there.
The point is not to say "this is homepage content" and "this is FAQ content" and so on. The point is that we need to better understand what users are needing from us at each point on our websites. Exactly how you organize this will depend on your business. My best tip is to try to match the amount of information to the purpose of the page.
It's Not Less, it Just has Breathing Room
As you can see, you don't have to hide information on your website to get people to read it. You can still include all the important details. The difference is that instead of putting up visually overwhelming walls of text, information can be presented when it's most helpful to the reader.
Use eye-catching headlines, clean white space, and images to help guide your visitors along. Keep paragraph text brief and approachable and focus on information that matters the most.
Because when websites try to say everything at once, the important messages get lost in the noise. The goal isn't to say less. It's to make sure the things that matter most can actually be heard.
