Today, our lives are so cluttered by choice. It is everywhere. I can walk down to Coffee Waves and stare at their massive menu not knowing what to get. That’s because I love coffee and have my staples. Still, I freeze.

People seem to agree that a little bit of choice increases their freedom, which I believe. I like the idea of looking for some new gym headphones and choosing between white, black, and blue! However, I don’t like going to Target and looking at two whole aisles of men’s body wash.

I am not on the side of saying we should give up choice at all. I felt like I should remind you just in case you didn’t catch that I said I agree with choice earlier.

“It’s not information overload, it’s filter failure.” - Clay Shirky.

Our brain tends to need to organize the data we take in. Here lies the opportunity. I already discussed how you can be unique and focus on the people that you serve best. Serving your audience the best doesn’t mean tons of options. It just creates a mess of confusion. It also creates more headache on you as well. You have to market more offerings, keep track of more inventory, scale up, and even hire more. All which can hurt profitability, especially when a business is just starting.

Simplify your offerings (or filter them really nicely so people can make the best choice), simplify your messaging to where it is simple and clear, and simplify your touchpoints. Your website homepage doesn’t need to be super cluttered.

In another post, I talked about how 90% of people leave your site within 10 seconds.

Next week, I will talk about the enemies of simplicity that Marty Neumeier discussed.