3 Ways You Are Overcomplicating Your Business

 

The idea of this is to encourage you to take a look at your business from the inside, out, and to examine three elements in particular: Your aesthetic, product options, and web presence & design. So many businesses tend to ignore the forest for the trees, in a sense, and end up building a customer experience that turns them off due to it being complicated and therefore, unpalatable.

You’ll find here a few simple solutions for business owners who may have alienated customers by making various elements of their business needlessly complicated.

 

For a Good Aesthetic, Less is More

Think of your aesthetic as an advertisement. When a potential customer visits your business, everything they see—and even their other senses are involved—is a commercial for your product or service.

The sad truth is that people would probably buy a sub-par product from you if the packaging is good—the packaging being everything from the way your building looks from the outside, to the box that your product comes in (not necessarily a literal box for those providing a service).

Keep in mind that this is just an illustration of how powerful your aesthetic can be; it’s not a great idea to put more energy into packaging than quality because people aren’t stupid. Once they realize it’s low quality, you probably won’t see them again.

 

Fewer Selections = Better Quality

You can get caught up really easily with your product selection for a number of reasons. For one, there’s a tendency to want to provide a ton of options for your customers because it seems like that’s what people want, right? As a matter of fact, not usually.

We all want options, yes; but too many options is actually stressful. If you are a retailer, online or otherwise, who makes it a point to offer all kinds of products, then by all means disregard this. An average small business sells one type of product, which means that you should probably only have a few variations.

A great example of this is a restaurant. Restaurants more often than not specialize in one type of cuisine. The ones who have a smaller menu of items generally do better than those who have 50 different entrées, and that is the point. You should focus on a few items to offer on your “menu” and do those few items really well.

See our previous article about how you can give your customers too many options:

Are You Giving Your Customers Too Many Options?

 

Dial in Your Website

Of course, the theme of this post is “too much, too many”, and one of the most relevant iterations of that is the content on your company website. When you offer up your product online, there is fierce competition for the attention consumers, which is why your website has to be clear and straight to the point.

One of your first steps will be designing a good landing page. Your landing page normally only has to show the visitor what you’re selling, one or two sentences describing why it’s so great, quick navigation to more info, and a CTA (call to action) to buy it if they want it. Everything on your site, including the landing page, should be uncluttered and visually appealing.

For more tips on creating the perfect website, check out these helpful posts:

What Type of Website is Right for Your Business

11 DIY Web Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Keeping it simple in every aspect of your business not only makes it more appealing to your customers, but it makes it easier for you to manage and maintain. When you get rid of the chaos and boil it down to a clean aesthetic and a few of your best product selections, you can concentrate on achieving high-quality, well-developed products and service—instead of having a fantastic amount of choices and distractions that overwhelm the customer.