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The Psychology Behind Boring Premium Websites — Transcript

by Sam Crawford | Web Design Expert · 2,755 words · 392 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Some of the most premium websites I've
0:02ever seen sell the most boring things on
0:04earth. You've got plumbing, insurance,
0:07healthcare. One of them even sells flow
0:09monitoring gear to oil and gas
0:12companies. So, the product is really
0:13dull, but you land on the site and
0:15within about 2 seconds you've decided
0:18the company is serious and established,
0:20and it's not the cheapest option in the
0:22room. You didn't reason your way there.
0:24That's psychology doing exactly what it
0:26was built to do. Most businesses chase
0:28that feeling, and what happens is they
0:30get it backwards. They try to look
0:32premium by piling on effects,
0:34ingredients, and animations. They'll
0:36throw more copy in than anyone's going
0:38to read, and it backfires every single
0:41time. Trying that hard reads as not
0:44being sure of yourself. I've built over
0:46800 websites, including for Fortune 500
0:49companies. The ones that come across as
0:51expensive almost never win on
0:53decoration. What they do is they win on
0:55restraint, on what got left off the
0:58page. That stripped-back look is the
1:00hardest thing in web design to pull off.
1:03If you learn to spot it, you'll know
1:05whether your site's restraint is doing
1:07real work or just hiding the fact that
1:09nobody ever made a decision.
1:13Think about the last site that impressed
1:15you with how it looked. You've seen them
1:17all before, the big animations, things
1:19moving in from off the page, and a
1:21layout that you stopped and you would
1:23admired. You remember that design, which
1:26means for a second or two you stopped
1:28thinking about the company and you
1:30started thinking about the website. On a
1:32portfolio for a design studio, okay,
1:35yeah, that's fine. But if it's on a site
1:37that has to sell insurance or win a
1:39consulting client, then that's a
1:41problem, because you need them thinking
1:43about the decision that they need to
1:45make, and a really fancy design just
1:47pulled them away from it. What premium
1:49does is it goes under the radar, so the
1:52visitor lands on the site, and without
1:53being able to explain why, they just
1:55relax. They know where they are and who
1:58it's for and they can see what to do
2:00next. [music] The design did all of that
2:02and they never once looked at it
2:04directly. As an example, I'm buying a
2:06house at the moment and when I go on a
2:08home builder's website, I don't want
2:11this all singing, all dancing show. I
2:13want to type in my area, I want to see
2:15the homes available near me and get the
2:18next step. If the site makes me hunt for
2:20that, I don't sit there thinking, "Bad
2:22design." I just leave and I move on to
2:24the next. And that is the bar. Did a
2:27user get where they needed to go without
2:30noticing that they were being guided? If
2:32yes, then the design has worked even if
2:35they can't really call it beautiful. So,
2:37we built a site for Market Fair, which
2:40is a Melbourne market with more than 300
2:43independent sellers under one roof and
2:45it has to speak to completely different
2:48people at once. So, you have audience A,
2:50which is shoppers planning a visit and
2:53then audience B, which is stall holders
2:55who book in a stall. Now, the lazy
2:58version that we could have designed
2:59would cram every single morsel of info
3:02for both audiences onto that page and
3:05what happens is it just overwhelms
3:07everyone. So, what we did was we split
3:10the homepage so each visitor can quickly
3:13identify their own path. [music] You've
3:15got two audiences and nobody's left
3:17scratching their head trying to figure
3:19out where to go.
3:22The most powerful thing you can do to a
3:23page is take things off it. And I know
3:27that sounds counterintuitive, right?
3:28But, there's this rule that I keep
3:30coming back to. If you can halve the
3:32content on a page and it still makes
3:34sense, good. If you can halve it again,
3:37even better. You see, most sites are
3:39carrying two to three times the amount
3:41of words and sections and effects that
3:44they truly need and every extra thing is
3:47one more object between the visitor and
3:49them making a decision. One warning
3:51though, because people take this way too
3:54far. Having the copy is not the same as
3:56not caring about the copy. What survived
3:59the court has to be properly written
4:01sales copy that speaks to the person
4:04reading it. Written by a human,
4:05understands the buyer. You can use AI to
4:08get on stock or tighten a line if you
4:10want, but a page stripped back to just a
4:12few sentences of generic filler is way
4:15worse than the bloated version written
4:18by a human who knows their audience and
4:20knows their business. Restraint reads as
4:23expensive for a reason, and it comes
4:25from how humans judge status. Think
4:27about old money or the whole understated
4:30luxury idea that's had its moment
4:31lately. The most premium brands on earth
4:34signal by what they leave off. Think
4:36about someone like Loro Piana, right? No
4:39loud logos, no shouting. The message
4:42that sits underneath is I don't need
4:44[music] to convince you. Now, a website
4:47works the exact same way. When a page is
4:49calm and it's sure of itself, the
4:51visitor takes that as a company with
4:53nothing to prove. And on the inverse,
4:55when a page is cluttered and shouting
4:57for attention, they read it the other
4:59way, even though they might not
5:01necessarily be able to name why. And
5:03boring is where this matters most. So,
5:06we rebuilt a site for a company called
5:08Flowcorp. They make industrial flow and
5:11level monitoring instruments.
5:13Unglamorous stuff, I know, but 40 years
5:16in the trade selling into lots and lots
5:19of different industries from oil and gas
5:21all the way through to food and
5:22beverage. Now, their old site led with a
5:25wall of part numbers. Hundreds of
5:27products dumped on you all at once. So,
5:29what we did to strip this back was we
5:31took most of it off the front. So, now
5:34the home page leads with who they are
5:36and obviously the 40 years of doing this
5:38well. And the full catalog then sits
5:41behind a clean structure that an
5:42engineer who is most likely going going
5:45the person that comes onto the site come
5:47work through when they're ready. Every
5:49instrument is going to be laid out the
5:50same way with specifications,
5:52applications, and then a clear route to
5:54a quote. We didn't add anything overly
5:57flashy. For the most part, we were
5:58taking things away, and the site started
6:01reading like this serious established
6:03supplier that they are. That is the
6:05decision a lot of businesses are way too
6:08nervous to make because taking things
6:10off a page can often feel like losing
6:12something. However, it actually works
6:15all the way around. Every single section
6:17that you delete makes the ones that
6:19survive look more deliberate, and in
6:21turn, deliberate is what reads as
6:23expensive. One caveat I will mention is
6:26that this naturally has a limit, and
6:29getting it wrong costs people a lot of
6:31sales.
6:34How far you strip a page back depends on
6:36how much the buyer stands to lose. The
6:39higher the stakes, the more a visitor
6:41needs before they trust you. And
6:43stripping a high-stakes page back to a
6:45headline and a button is naturally going
6:47to read as evasive, like you're trying
6:49to hide something. Take wealth
6:50management. We built a site for a wealth
6:52consulting firm called Attune, where the
6:55whole relationship is about handing over
6:58serious money. Someone choosing who
7:00looks after their life savings doesn't
7:02want a sparse little page with three
7:04words and a book a call button. They
7:06want to see the process. They want to
7:08see who they are, how they work, right
7:11down to what happens once you get in
7:13touch. So, we gave them that. Room to
7:15explain the approach, the services, and
7:18a proper section on the founder himself.
7:21So, there's a human being attached to
7:23all that money instead of some faceless
7:25brand. Now, obviously, that looks like
7:27the opposite of restraint, but every
7:29section still has to earn its place. In
7:31a high-stakes category, more of the
7:34buyer's questions have to be answered on
7:36the page before they book a call. It's
7:38pretty much the same principle, but just
7:40a bit more information because that fear
7:43is bigger. If you flip it around, the
7:45rule still holds. Low stakes, like
7:48booking a haircut, grabbing a coffee,
7:50and all that process detail turns into
7:52noise. For instance, nobody's going to
7:54need a six-step methodology to buy a
7:57sandwich. So, before you cut anything or
7:59add anything, ask how much your buyer is
8:01actually risking and let that decide how
8:03much you actually show them. That
8:05judgment call, so how much to show and
8:07how much to strip, is the thing my team
8:10and I get paid to make on every single
8:12build. It's rarely obvious, and getting
8:14it wrong in either direction costs you
8:17customers. If you want to pressure test
8:19your own site against it, what I've done
8:21is I've put together a premium website
8:23checklist. It's the exact list we run
8:26through internally, the things that
8:27separate the expensive-looking sites
8:30from the cheap ones. And you can run
8:31your own homepage against it in 10
8:34minutes. The link to that is in the
8:35description. And of course, if you'd
8:37rather we just handled it for you,
8:39that's what I Crawford does all day,
8:41every day. So, the same link is going to
8:43take you to our work, and then you can
8:45book a call with us if you want. Either
8:47way, don't skip the next one because
8:48it's the mistake I see boring companies
8:51make more than any other, and it has
8:53nothing to do with design.
8:57The most common mistake in this whole
8:59category is about who the site is built
9:02to please. Take a look at the average
9:04boring industry website and count how
9:07much of it is the company talking about
9:10itself. You've all seen it. We are a
9:12leading provider, founded in 19
9:15whatever, our values, our mission, a
9:17message from the board, a wall of
9:19milestones nobody even cares about. And
9:21I can tell you right now that content
9:23usually exists for one reason. It
9:26strokes the ego of the people who signed
9:28it off, the decision makers, and whose
9:30ever idea it was in the first place. And
9:33obviously, I understand the pressure. If
9:35you've got investors, you want to keep
9:37them happy. But what really keeps them
9:39happy is the bottom line. And the bottom
9:41line comes from a site that works on the
9:44buyer. Flattering the boardroom has
9:46never sold anything. Every section that
9:49exists to impress an executive is a
9:51section that isn't answering a
9:53customer's real questions. And the
9:55visitor can sense when a page is talking
9:57to them and when it's talking to itself.
9:59And in that same vein, part of my job is
10:02to push back on that. The client wants
10:05their favorite section front and center.
10:07But if the data says it's in the buyer's
10:09way, I'll just tell them. I'll give them
10:12the reasoning behind it. A good designer
10:14isn't an order taker. Sometimes the best
10:17thing that you can do for a client is
10:19stop them getting in their own
10:20customer's way. So, what you can do is
10:23go through your site section by section
10:26and put one blunt question to each one.
10:28Is this here for the buyer or is it here
10:30for me? Everything in that second pile
10:33is probably costing you money.
10:36Now, there's a risk hiding inside all of
10:38this and it trips most people up who try
10:41to go uber minimal. From the outside,
10:43restraint and laziness can almost look
10:46identical. A clean, sparse page can be
10:49the work of someone who made a hundred
10:51careful decisions or it can be a
10:53template with a stock photo and a font
10:55that nobody ever touched. Same amount of
10:57stuff on the screen, but a completely
10:59different signal. Luckily, the brain is
11:02really good at telling those two apart
11:04even when you couldn't say how. And all
11:06of this comes down to a really
11:08well-documented bias called the effort
11:10heuristic. E.g., we judge something as
11:13higher quality and more trustworthy when
11:16we can sense that actual effort went
11:18into it. In essence, you can tell when
11:20someone put the work in. And you can
11:22tell just as fast when they didn't.
11:24We've all seen it before. The generic
11:26Google fonts, stock icons, same photo
11:29library everyone's using mixed in with a
11:31flat black and white palette with no
11:33thought behind it. Now, none of that
11:35reads as tasteful restraint. Just says
11:38that nobody could be bothered. So, the
11:40line between premium boring and just
11:43straight-up boring is curation. Real
11:46photography instead of stock, a dead
11:48black turned into a slate on off-white
11:51with one confident highlight color. And
11:53then, obviously, I always talk about
11:55this, but the small interactions that
11:57take time to get right. On a site we
12:00built for an events company called Tease
12:02Me Rome, the photography carries the
12:04whole thing because their website is the
12:07first venue they ever designed for a
12:09prospect. What we did was we kept the
12:11layout intentionally clean and
12:13editorial. So, what happens is the
12:15photography does the heavy lifting and
12:17it does the selling. Now, that only
12:19holds up because what's in the
12:20photographs is genuinely top-tier.
12:22That's what most people mean when they
12:24say you can just tell. Effort always
12:27shows. You can't fake it with a
12:28template. You set You can't buy it on
12:30Fiverr. The only thing separating
12:32premium version from the lazy one is
12:35literally the amount of work that went
12:36in. Most of that work, obviously, the
12:38visitor never sees, but somehow they
12:41register all of it.
12:45So, the question is, how do you judge
12:46your own site when you're the most
12:48biased person alive about it? You made
12:51it or you paid for it. So, of course,
12:54you think it looks perfect. The honest
12:55answer is the one thing I tell every
12:58business owner, stop trusting your eye
13:00and check whether people reach the one
13:02action that matters or whether they drop
13:04off before it. That number tells if your
13:07restraint is doing a good job or it's
13:09just hiding an empty page. So, pull your
13:12visitor numbers, pull how many of them
13:14convert, and put that against the
13:16average for your industry. If you're
13:17above that number, then something is
13:20going right, and it doesn't matter one
13:22bit whether you personally find the site
13:24beautiful or not. Now, if it sits below
13:27it, no amount of animation is going to
13:29save you. Now, as with everything,
13:31there's always going to be an exception,
13:32and it is much rarer than people want it
13:35to be. It is a site that is built purely
13:37as a brand campaign. So, imagine some
13:39interactive Gucci thing that exists to
13:42just be experienced by the user. If that
13:45isn't what you're doing, and it almost
13:47certainly isn't, then the numbers are
13:48the whole verdict. Now, if your
13:50analytics aren't set up yet, just try a
13:53rough good check while you fix it. So,
13:55show your homepage to a stranger for 5
13:58seconds and then take it away. Can they
14:00tell you what you do and where they
14:02click next? Then go through it section
14:04by section and ask whether each one is
14:07there for the buyer or for you. And take
14:09the hardest test of all. Try to halve
14:12the whole thing. If you can cut half the
14:14page and lose nothing that matters, that
14:17half was never working for you. Because
14:20in essence, that's all premium ever was.
14:23What is left when you strip away
14:25everything that isn't helping a buyer
14:27decide. Boring companies look expensive
14:30because boring, done on purpose, is just
14:32clarity. And hardly anyone online seems
14:35to bother to get it right. If you want
14:37to see all of this applied to a real
14:39site instead of talked about in the
14:41abstract, I took a dated corporate
14:43website and rebuilt it into something
14:45that sells, and I broke down every
14:48design principle behind it while I did
14:50it. And that's the one to watch next.

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