Don’t load up the home page of your website with all the content you possibly can. Yes, we know, it’s all really important. People need to know what the site’s all about, and they need to know immediately. “Quick, throw them the 500 page web manual so they can get the gist of our site!”

This isn’t a good idea. Regular people will fail to catch that manual, and will only get hit in the head with it. We’re all just regular people, and we can only read so much at one time. Furthermore, once they pick up that book, the cover is pretty stacked with content. That’s a good thing, right? We all want to know what this site is about, right now! It gets a little tricky when the cover of the book looks like this.

Don’t read books? Everyone eats donuts. You’re a donut now.

When donuts visit websites, they get information, in the form of sugary glaze. Right now, you’re getting glaze poured all over you, and you can only absorb so much of it. If you wanted to become some sort of super donut, then you need to wait to let the glaze cool, and then you can pour more glaze on. Layers and layers of sugar will accumulate on your donut body and you’ll be revered amongst donut kind. Or you will have an easier time understanding the information. When a site feeds you content in smaller chunks, the information from that content can be absorbed better and built upon. Let a donut visitor absorb information in staggered increments to allow them to retain the information from the content.

The wonders of too much information: People will glaze over. Like donuts that become oversaturated with delicious glaze, so too with people when all of your really important information is fed to them at once. Like books without concise descriptions and covers, websites without a clear message will fail to deliver information through their content.

Much like you reference a book in the sense of the question, “Where did you read that?” websites are referenced as places you visit. When the content of a book is referred to, it’s associated with the message of the book. “I read in Moby Dick that…” The message of the book is it’s title and author. The message of a website is a little more abstract than that, but it ties the content to a single reference point that brings everything together.

After a donut visitor has an idea on what this site is about, then they have an anchor. The information they get from the content is tied to this anchor, and it holds everything together. This anchor is the essence of the message, and should work with the content. The message should make the content easier to understand, and the content should support the content. When this happens, the information is more convincing and stronger, and stays on the donut with the visitor.

Consider two different websites that are trying to sell you the same thing:

Even though they both sell the same thing, donuts visitors will know that the products sold on the right will turn them into a mad scientist. There are a lot of products shown at once on the site to the left, and this confuses them. They are comparing a mere product they can’t fathom much about to a product that turns you into a mad scientist. This level of persuasion is simple yet effective in setting the whole mood for the website, and giving it purpose greater than just a store.

So give donuts everywhere the chance to become super donuts. Let them have a clear message and let the glaze settle over them before you cram any more sugar information down our throats. Give regular people everywhere a chance to understand a website. Don’t load the homepage with as much content as you can, and provide a clear message to anchor the content to.