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Make It Plain
The world asks us to process an extraordinary amount of information every day.
Emails. Headlines. Notifications. Product choices. AI tools. New apps. New subscriptions. New companies promising to solve familiar problems in slightly different ways.
By the time a customer encounters your brand, they're already mentally filtering. They're looking for signals that answer a simple question:
"What the heck is this and do I even care?"
That question is often answered in seconds.
Not because people are impatient, but because attention has become one of our scarcest resources. The brain is constantly looking for ways to reduce effort, simplify decisions, and move on.
The brands that stand out aren't always the ones that say the most.
They're often the ones that leave the least for customers to figure out.
The Brain Is Constantly Looking for Shortcuts
Psychologists call this cognitive fluency: the easier something is to process, the more positively we're inclined to feel about it.
Research by psychologists Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer has shown that information that's easier to read, pronounce, or understand is often perceived as more trustworthy and credible.
The same principle applies to brands.
Customers aren't carefully analyzing every company they encounter.
They're making hundreds of tiny decisions every day.
Anything that reduces mental effort has an advantage.
Calendly Made Scheduling Feel Obvious
Before Calendly, scheduling a meeting often meant a long chain of emails:
"Does Tuesday work?"
"How about Thursday?"
"Actually, I'm free Friday morning."
The product didn't invent online calendars.
It simply removed an unnecessary layer of friction from a task millions of people already performed.
Everything about the brand reflects that same philosophy. The interface is simple. The messaging is direct. The value proposition is immediately understandable.
Calendly didn't just simplify scheduling.
It simplified understanding what simplified scheduling looks like.
Calendly didn't invent online scheduling. It simply eliminated the back-and-forth that frustrated millions of people. The product and the brand made the value immediately obvious.
Aldi Simplified the Shopping Experience
A very different example comes from Aldi.
Traditional supermarkets often compete by offering more:
more brands
more product variations
more promotions
more choice
Aldi made a different bet.
The retailer intentionally reduced assortment, simplified store layouts, and emphasized private-label products.
The result?
Customers spend less time comparing nearly identical options and more time making decisions.
According to industry research, the average supermarket carries tens of thousands of products. Aldi carries only a fraction of that.
Less complexity became part of the value proposition.
Walking down an Aldi aisle feels different from walking through a traditional supermarket. With fewer products, simpler layouts, and less visual clutter, the brand makes shopping easier by asking customers to make fewer decisions.
Simplicity Often Signals Confidence
Many founders worry that simplifying their messaging will make their company seem less sophisticated.
In reality, the opposite is often true.
Take Mercury, the banking platform for startups.
Business banking is inherently complicated, involving compliance, payments, treasury management, and financial operations.
Yet Mercury presents the experience with remarkably clear language and a clean interface that makes opening and managing an account feel approachable.
The company doesn't pretend banking is simple.
It simply makes it feel simpler.
Business banking is complex. Mercury doesn't hide that reality—it hides the complexity from the customer. Its clean, intuitive mobile app makes sophisticated financial tools feel approachable and easy to navigate.
Too Many Choices Can Become a Barrier
There's a well-known concept in behavioral science called the paradox of choice. It refers to the fact that, while people like having options, too many of them can make it harder to decide at all.
One of the most influential demonstrations came from psychologist Sheena Iyengar and professor Mark Lepper in what became known as the "jam study."
At an upscale grocery store, shoppers encountered one of two tasting displays. One featured 24 varieties of jam. The other featured just 6.
The larger display attracted significantly more attention.
But when it came time to buy, the opposite happened.
Only about 3% of shoppers who saw 24 jams made a purchase.
Among shoppers who saw just 6 options, roughly 30% bought a jar.
In other words, the smaller assortment produced about ten times the conversion rate.
The lesson wasn't that customers dislike choice.
It was that excessive choice creates cognitive effort. And the more effort a decision requires, the more likely people are to postpone it—or abandon it altogether.
Brands encounter this every day.
Too many pricing plans.
Too many product variations.
Too many homepage messages.
Every additional decision asks customers to do a little more work.
The best brands don't eliminate choice.
They eliminate unnecessary complexity.
Behavioral researchers Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper found that shoppers offered 24 jams were far less likely to buy than those offered just 6. The takeaway wasn't that people dislike choice—it was that too much choice creates friction.
What This Means for Founders
When founders think about simplifying, they often focus on copy.
The bigger opportunity is reducing friction everywhere.
Ask yourself:
Could someone explain what we do after seeing our homepage for 10 seconds?
Are we asking customers to compare too many options?
Is our product becoming more powerful or simply more complicated?
What are customers having to figure out that we could make obvious?
Every answer points to an opportunity.
Because every unnecessary question delays a decision.
Final Thought
Customers don't wake up hoping to spend more time understanding your business.
They're trying to solve a problem and move on with their day.
The brands that earn their attention aren't always the ones with the most features, the longest feature lists, or the most elaborate explanations.
They're the ones that make the next step feel obvious.
If your customer has to work to understand your value, they may never experience it.
The best brands do the hard thinking so their customers don't have to.
Best,
Edwin
