In 2007, I wrote an ebook called “Save the Pixel—the Art of Simple Web Design,” which teaches that simplicity is the key to designing web pages that work. Th e book has sold more than 8,000 copies, and my agency Scratchmedia has become well known for the clean, spacious design style.

After I presented on simple web design at Ken McCarthy’s System Intensive seminar in 2008, I was asked what evidence I could share that proved the eff ectiveness of my approach. I was shocked to realize I had no numbers to prove that simplicity works!

I made a commitment to discover what really makes the diff erence between an ordinary web site and a great site. I devised a plan to make design fi xes to a range of web sites. Th ese fi xes would address 50 common web design mistakes, which I thought would have a positive, measurable impact on the conversion rates of web sites (that is, what proportion of people took the action the designer intended).

I planned to test each of these changes across multiple sites and then to compare the results. Th ese experiments would generate data that would prove which design factors make the most impact on conversion. I would publish the results in this book, to give other site owners a checklist of guaranteed fi xes. I found several site owners who were willing to let my team experiment on their sites, and we set to work.

The project did not work out in the way I had envisaged. When I started out on this journey, I thought this book would be about graphic design. I discovered that graphic design is only one factor in what makes your site work—and a relatively minor one. Aft er running about 100 experiments on dozens of web sites, I discovered that it is possible to improve success rates on every web site—in many cases signifi cantly! My team has more than doubled the conversion rates of several web pages on a range of sites, oft en through simple fi xes to common problems.

My extensive research, and the results of our own experiments, have taught me that optimizing a web site goes much deeper than just simplifying its design. Yes, graphic design has a part to play in the success of your web site, but I have also discovered some far more powerful techniques, which you can start to implement today, and which don’t require graphic design skills!