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independence2 unconnected · 2 more authors in those circles
standing

contested · 3 claims against 2

applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

mixed results

confidence

high

evidence

5 claims · 5 articles · 3 receipts

window

2014-05-07 → 2026-05-13

2 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Strip the page back, or accept a busy one

The instinct to clear space is strong and the evidence cuts both ways. Removing clutter until one path is obvious produced very large lifts, and auditing each element by whether it would help you sell face to face deletes most of them. Against that, pages which actually sell frequently look cluttered, and in one round of user sessions the single most common complaint about a professionally designed homepage was too much empty space.

Where this splits

Riley argues both sides, telling founders to reduce the homepage to one obvious path and separately that polishing toward minimalism loses money, with Kogan's session data showing whitespace read as emptiness.

  1. side 01 · 3 claims

    Strip the page until one path is obvious

    Dru Riley · Harry Dry · Katelyn Bourgoin

    1. 1Strip the homepage back until one path is obvious rather than adding more to it.
    2. 2Audit every element by asking whether it would help you sell to a customer standing in front of you, and delete it if it would not.
    3. 3Strip the extras out and add pages or content that answer the two most basic questions, what the product is and who it is for, in plain terms.

  2. side 02 · 2 claims

    Pages that sell look cluttered, minimalism loses money

    Dru Riley · Greg Kogan

    1. 1Stop grooming the site toward minimalism. Pages that sell frequently look cluttered, and founders lose money polishing instead of converting.
    2. 2Do not assume current design fashion helps conversion; test it, because generous whitespace can read as emptiness to your audience.

What it returned

  • 225

    The Weather Channel removed clutter from its homepage and conversions rose 225 percent.

  • Argued directly against the clean-site instinct: the pages that actually sell tend to look busy.

  • On Scalyr's professionally designed homepage, the single most frequent participant complaint was that there was too much space.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in landing page

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.