"Clean" OR "Cluttered" Site Design?

I say it is niche dependant, if I am looking for news then I expect it to be cluttered because I wan't all the news at my fingertips. If I am reading a tutorial on how to clean a sink then I only want that, I don't want extra links on how to clean a table. So I would say it is highly dependant on the niche and the information you are offering.

It all depends on your targeted audience. It is design related thing. If you are news oriented site, than cluttered design is OK, but if you are in, for example, art niche then clean design is more suitable.
Depends on niche and your audience.

I leave cluttered sites after a few seconds, I hate diggin
for info I came there for, if you're givin it to me.. let's do
it or I'm gone.

If I find what I'm looking for and it was more than I expected
I'll look around and see what else I can learn before I bounce.

I don't think I'm the 'average reader mentality' though, I'm
just one man's opinion. I say content is king in my opinion.

A cluttered site confuses the visitor about what your site
is all about EXCEPT it is about clutter. So most people
would get confused and leave. So generally speaking
a clean site would work better. But some clutter on
an otherwise clean site can get the site some ATTENTION
that it wouldn't otherwise get--hence why copywriters
often 'mark up' their sales letters.

But when it come to site design the definitive and seminal
work is Don't Make Me Think! by Steve Krug

-Ray Edwards

I've been hearing that cluttered is the way to go but I'm sure it's based on the target market. If I'm not mistaken, John Chow's blog is a bit cluttered. From what I'm hearing, it keeps them engaged and makes them want to search for stuff...

Me personally, i don't stay on cluttered sites long but could that be because we're internet marketers. We like things clean and organized maybe?

But to the average consumer/person (which I haven't been for a while), it may be a bit of psychological challenge they thrive for.

I remember the Myspace days. Most sites were full of clutter because Myspace allowed users to completely customize their pages. We stayed on Myspace for hours. this is when I was an average thinker; working a 9 - 5 and looking to retire in 40 years...

Dennis
the Marketing Menace

I think CLEAN with SIMPLISTIC design works best ... most of the time. Most people don't want to work too hard to find the information they're after. And a lot of readers don't want to be distracted.

On the other hand, if someone is just killing time with no purpose, a cluttered site may be their playground.

It can definitely be niche-dependent though. For instance, you have 3-column sites in magazine style that cater to the latest news in any given niche. Their sites may tend to look cluttered but they can also look "exciting" to the visitor/reader who may find it to be impressive. These "news" type sites want you to spend more time on their site looking for the next best thing to click on.

Having a cluttered site can be a strategic move on the site owner's part to lower their bounce rate or simply give the visitor lots of options.

I wonder if there's been any polls or surveys done on this?

Is this a trick question? Clean of course.

Dennis this is exactly the reason that Cluttered sites are more engaging.
And yes Niche also important to determine the design of any site.

Personally I also like the 'Clean' design as other IMs do (as IMs are busy creatures and try to be focused ) but I guess common readers engaged in more challenging and time consuming sites.

It's not only a matter of niche but also of personal preference. But generally I feel that clarity should always win over clutter - very few people like to be lost and confused all the time trying to find something they need. Clarity doesn't have to be minimalistic though - you can just create a smart navigation and cross-reference structure only showing a small part of information to visitors at a time. To me this is a winning scenario.

Cluttered does not mean that it looks bad. If it is designed nicely and organized than the cluttered can look good and be engaging.
I come from the design world and know what I am talking about.
It all depends on your niche and audience.
Clean can look bad also. If the design is good and organized it does not matter if it is clean or cluttered.

I have to wonder why monster sites like CNN, Fox News, MSN, Men's Health, Huffington Post, etc. have cluttered sites ... it must work for them.

Test it. Don't go on any person's say-so. It's relatively simple to change WP themes. You never know what will work best for your site.

Clean has better conversion. However, your mileage may vary. Best to test it out and tell us your experience. It reminds me of Google back in the day when I was doing a lot of ad words advertising and they were angry. Google wanted me to increase my 1% CTR to 2% by adding words like FREE and I said no. What is important to me is how many of the clicks convert into sales and freebie hunters tend to buy zero. All they do is eat up my bandwidth and slow down my server. Clean pages appear more fresh and that attracts buyers as well as looking more pro.

It's personal preference, but I prefer a clean look myself.
I'm not keen on seeing animated gifs and banners everywhere.

I don't like a cluttered site. If it's jumbled and confusing it isn't going to make me want to search for stuff, it's just going to frustrate me and put me off. However, a site can have lots on it but not necessarily be cluttered. Personally, so long as the content is relevant, the site offers plenty of value and is well organised then I am happy to spend time there going through a lot of stuff and, at least to me, it gives the impression of an attempt to engage the visitor,. Again, if a simplistic site gives loads of good, relevant info then I don't mind that approach either.

From a purely aesthetic point of view I know that I'm tiring of all the cookie cutter, sterile, Apple-esque sites that are all over the place. I just find them boring and bland. But I think the thing of most importance, whichever approach is used, is that the site provides good content that's presented in a clear, non-confusing way

In my experience, clean and focused drives sales; cluttered or busy drives clicks and activity.

I just finished revamping my main site because I was sick of the bloated trends in WP themes. I'm currently trying a two-tier approach: clean and focused above the fold, more options as you scroll down. Haven't decided if the "busy" area is still too much but time will tell.

Actually, I just finished reading (about 5 minutes ago) Ryan Deiss' new report called "Authority Hacks" and he shows an example where he had a clean site in the survival niche that wasn't getting hardly any traffic, so he changed it to a cluttered site and the traffic skyrocketed.

As someone else mentioned above, I don't know if this is niche dependent or not. He does place a huge emphasis on becoming an authority by leveraging the knowledge of other experts and focusing on building a list.

According to Ryan Deiss in his latest report cluttered sites win hands down.

Cluttered does not mean disorganized though.

Sandy

Whatever brings conversions.

I haven't done any testing at all between the two but for me it's clean all the way. I haven't been there in a while but icq.com used to be the worst example of a cluttered site. Look at Google, nuff said...

It depends on your niche, but why don't combine Content + Clean design?!

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish with the website.

For instance, a made-for-adsense website will probably want to have a super clean look with the only clutter being the ads, so they get more attention.

A more cluttered website tends to look more professional like a "real" website though, as long as it is organized well.

I know Ryan Deiss uses the word "cluttered" to describe these sites, but it depends on your defintion of "cluttered".

His very own site that he mentions, Survival Life - It's your life. Prepare to survive. , isn't all that "cluttered" if you ask me. It's running the "Max Mag" theme and has just ONE ad and a small newsletter optin form.

That one ad opens a popup for a free report.

So if by "cluttered", you mean "cluttered" with CONTENT....then I guess that is so...

It's just not cluttered with ADS...

The site actually has CONTENT and instead of pushing it's visitors OFF the site with ads and affiliate links, it's a magnet for visitors that collects email addresses AKA leads.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out it's monetized thru email marketing. I know for a fact that site and another he runs funnel leads into a private premium newsletter that re-bills customers @ $20/month.

And the trust and authority of this site is thru the roof because it's almost 100% content...no ads, no affiliate links, etc. You can bet that plays a factor in increasing conversions for the monthly newsletter backend.

Not to mention these are the sites Google loves. The last thing you can call it is a "thin affiliate" site, yet it's still making money....what a concept.

In general my life has always been cluttered, messy house, messy car, messy shed.

I think this transfers over to my websites, I always think they look to cluttered and messy.

By the end of 2013 I want to be able to create clean, tidy, websites.

I agree with edlewis, it depends on the inference of the word cluttered. Cluttered in most peoples' minds means messy and almost impossible to navigate with ease. However some may say the BBC News site is cluttered; it's not it just has lots of info on same page but is very well organised and easy to navigate. So if you want to promote ONE product I'd say 'clean and simple' and if you promote several products in same niche, then lots of info as long as its neat is ok.

Traffic from "cluttered" sites doesn't matter. I would much rather have a simple pitch page site that makes me $1,000 a month, with only 40 hits per day..... as opposed to a huge (cluttered) site that makes me $100 a month with 500 hits per day.

I really prefer a clean layout for sites. You can have a good amount of information on a site and still have it look organized. As someone else mentioned, when people think of the word "cluttered" they think of disorganized and messy.

News sites and Online Magazine sites are notorious for having a ton of information on the home page, but as long as it's easy to navigate it's not too much of an issue. You have to strike a good balance. You don't want too much empty space, but you don't want a disorganized mess either.

Cluttered if organised well then its ok, if things are all over the shant I am out of there I don't want to be looking around where to click or feel like everything on the site is shouting out at me.

I think minimal, clean , focused site works best.
If you want to sell something from your site minimal design with
good call to action is great way to create trust & increase conversion
Regarding Survivallife:
In my opinion survivallife is not cluttered at all
they have nice magazine theme layout which works great
for these type of sites where people want to quickly go through
all important posts.
They are focused on lead generation & have great call to action.

Focus more on the content rather than the design!

To bump this discussion a bit.
Here is my second site, Magazine Designing. This is my expertise since I am an magazine art director.
As you can see it is pretty clean and neatly designed. My targeted audience are art directors and designers in general. In design "less is more" almost always.

So, what am I trying to say?

Your site can be clean or cluttered, it does not matter. It is your niche and your audience that are most important. Your design should reflect what would they want to see.
In my case, design is important but to present information in clear way is even more important.
I hope I have achieved that.

No doubt it's Clean/Minimalitic.

I get weekly compliments from my readers -- not that my site's design look pretty -- but that it's clean and easy to read.

Just look at the top blogs in any niche (let's use IM as an example)

QuickSprout
SocialTriggers
ThinkTraffic
Viperchill

ALL of them have clean design.

Remember: you want people to zero in on your content. And they can't do that if you have a million nasty banner ads everywhere. It's your content that keeps people on your site.