Keeping Your Website Uncluttered

Writen by Tim Priebe

Too many websites out there have extremely busy home pages. Once you get there, you're so overwhelmed with text and images that you have no idea what you want to do. Even mainstream news sites can fall into that trap. So what can you do to insure your website does not get that cluttered?

First off, how can you tell if your site is cluttered? While none of the following necessarily is an indication in and of themselves, they may be a sign that your site is getting cluttered.

• You have to scroll down a lot to view the whole page.
• There are more than three columns.
• The column count across the width of the page changes as you go down.
• Your site's pages are not organized into categories.

Your site may have been growing this way for years, and now it seems impossible to fix. Fear not! There is always a way out of the mess.

First, archive anything on the front page that you have to scroll down pretty far to read. At the bottom of your page, you can put a link to older news.

Reorganize the layout of the front page so that there are three columns or less, and so that the columns stay the same all the way down the page. This will make the front page much less cluttered, so it will be easier for site visitors to pick out the information they need.

Make a list of all the pages in your site and separate them into categories. You may even need subcategories. Rework your menu system so that everything is organized into those categories. It may even help you to organize your site's folder/directory structure so that they reflect the new categories and subcategories. You can also take the original list and create a page that is a site map. While not always necessary, this often helps search engines like Google index your entire site.

It might even be time to implement a content management system if you have enough information. Having a dynamic site ensures that this sort of thing will be unlikely to happen to your site again.

Tim is the owner and senior web designer at T&S Web Design. His company has developed and maintained website for dozens of small businesses and organizations. Tim also maintains a blog with free website advice for small business owners, GetASiteOnline.com