@Josh: It’s hard honestly. Usually, the best way to get clients to think more critically about the content on their site is to ask them to put themselves in the ‘average user’ persona.

I think it’s a tendency for some to imagine a user who’s really very interested in their site — and incredibly patient. The truth is, most people aren’t very interested, and move fairly quickly through sites, even if they are the ‘target user.’ Pushing clients to consider how they use the web, and how fast they move through most sites shows them the value in paring back and editing their content.

@Björn: That’s such a frustrating situation — ‘dead’ landing pages that exist solely to prop up a content hierarchy just dilute the site message into mush. I always push that every page have at least one “action” that relates to a business goal.

@Evan: I think you’re very right to point out all the benefits of consistency and obvious patterns. I wholeheartedly agree that sites need consistency to enable usability.

Taking the print metaphor further, I’d say that most successful print projects have strong common elements and follow an internal style guide. Websites should be like just like this — familiar yet flexible, thoughtful and well considered.

In the context of my piece, I’m definitely discussing brochure-ware type sites where you’re displaying company and product information as well as marketing / branding ideas. In this context, I just think sites would be much stronger if they let the content influence and lead the design.

You seem to be talking mainly about web design in the context of web site design. I agree wholeheartedly that designing for the web the way you’d design a magazine spread in InDesign, for example, could improve everyone’s experience online dramatically. Of course, until its easy for people with limited knowledge of CSS to generate layouts as easily as they can in InDesign, that will remain difficult.

It’s important, though, I think to differentiate between different kinds of web design; in interface design for example its vital (as you know) to present each page identically (think property overview page) so that people can quickly scan and find the information they’re looking for.

So, while Apple’s individual product pages have different designs, the site structure within their product sites is usually similar (click here for performance information, here for tech specs, etc.), and in the Apple Store each product has an identical layout for cusomization, checkout, etc.

Obviously we all know this, but I think it would be helpful if we as a profession are more careful when we talk about “web design” – do we mean web site brochureware design? Web application design? Interface design? Information design? Flash design? Being explicit helps define the scope of our conversation, and makes it easier to communicate our meanings.

Or some shit.

In the end what most of those pages contained was a description of what the other pages contained. “To see our services, click the services link. For contact information, click the contact information link.” etc. What a nightmare. I learned to be more forceful with clients after that experience.

“Design is comparatively cheap and headache free, compared to re-wording and re-thinking your marketing pitch”

You’re exactly right here. It’s so much more work to include copy (messaging/wording) in the process of designing (redesigning) a site, but the result is always so much more powerful. It’s also a much more realistic view of design – but most people tend to stick to their strengths (design, ui, copy) in an individual sense instead of approaching projects holistically. All of those things have to work together – well.

My question to you is this: How do _you_ get buy-in on this idea from your clients? How do you explain that pages and sub-pages of information can be unnecessary? Have you had experience with clients that feel their site would be inadequate among larger and deeper-navigating sites in their market?

I agree it’s a great idea and I think the web would be all the better if we all just got to the point and left out all the fluff/cruft.