Let’s be honest, most B2B websites are a bit of a mess.
You’ve spent five figures on a "brand experience" featuring parallax scrolling, abstract metaphors about "synergy," and high-def videos of people shaking hands in glass boardrooms.
You think it looks premium. Your customer’s brain thinks it looks like a chore.
The science of "easy" in behavioural science is called cognitive fluency.
It’s the measure of how easily the human brain processes information.
When something is easy to process, we feel a warm glow of familiarity.
We trust it. We buy it.
When something is hard to process - think tiny fonts, jargon-heavy copy, or confusing navigation - it creates cognitive strain. This triggers the brain’s System 2, the sceptical, grumpy part of the mind that looks for reasons to say no.
Why simple wins
- The prototypicality trap: Research shows that readers prefer websites that look like prototypical versions of their category. If you’re a law firm, look like a law firm. If you try to reinvent the wheel with a disruptive layout, you’re just making the reader work harder to find the 'Contact' button.
- The lexical barrier: Using big words doesn't make you look smart, it makes you look like you’re hiding something. High-frequency words (the ones we use every day) are processed faster and trusted more.
If a reader has to "think" about how to use your site, you’ve already lost. We don’t design for awards; we design for the path of least resistance.
Use heuristics to make people think less about how to do stuff, and more about how your product will benefit them.
Selling a lifestyle happens at every click.
