“You have to make every single detail perfect and you have to limit the number of details.” – Jack Dorsey
The second half of that sentence is the harder instruction.
Most organizations that invest in a website project focus on what to include: which pages, which programs, which photography, which calls to action.
The more difficult and more consequential question is what to leave out. Which details belong. Which ones create noise. Which ones belong to a different conversation entirely.
Getting that judgment right is what separates a website that communicates clearly from one that communicates everything and lands nothing.
The instinct in most institutional website projects is to be comprehensive. Every program represented. Every staff member listed. Every initiative given a page. The reasoning is understandable, the organization has worked hard on all of it and does not want anything left out.
The problem is that comprehensiveness and clarity are in direct tension.
Simplicity is not the absence of substance. It is the result of a judgment process – deciding which details serve the visitor, which details serve the organization’s internal needs, and which details belong somewhere else entirely. That process is where most institutional website projects break down, and it is where the most valuable work happens before a single page is built.
Building a website is often described as a puzzle, assembling pieces until a picture emerges. That is accurate as far as it goes. What the analogy understates is that most organizations arrive at a website project with too many pieces, many of which belong to a different puzzle entirely.
The programs page that reflects a funding priority from three years ago. The staff listing that includes people who have since left. The mission language that was written for a capital campaign and never updated. The homepage hero that communicates what the organization aspired to be rather than what it has become.
Each of these is a puzzle piece. None of them belong in the current picture. Including them does not make the website more complete, it makes the right pieces harder to find.
The organizations whose websites communicate with clarity and authority are the ones that did the work of identifying which pieces belong before they started building. That work is not design work. It is organizational clarity work, and it determines the quality of everything the designer and developer produce afterward.
A website project that begins with execution: platform selection, design brief, content migration, before the organizational clarity work is done will produce a site that looks current and communicates the same generic impression as the one it replaced.
The work worth doing first is the harder work: identifying the two or three visitors whose confidence matters most, understanding what each of them needs to find and feel before they engage, and deciding which details serve that outcome and which ones do not.
When that work is done, the execution becomes straightforward. The designer knows what to prioritize. The developer knows what to build. The organization knows what to approve and what to set aside.
The puzzle pieces that belong to another puzzle stay out of the picture. The ones that remain fit together in a way that is legible to a first-time visitor before anyone from the organization has spoken to them.
That is what institutional clarity looks like when it is visible on a website. And it starts with the willingness to limit the number of details.
Start with the visitor rather than the organization. For each major section, ask whether a first-time visitor, someone with no prior relationship to your organization, needs this information to feel confident about who you are and what you do. If the answer is no, the detail serves an internal audience, not the visitor the site is meant to build trust with. That distinction is the basis for every meaningful editing decision.
Because the rebuild addressed the execution without addressing the clarity. New design applied to unexamined content produces a site that looks current but communicates the same undifferentiated impression as before. The clutter is organizational, too many priorities given equal weight, too many audiences addressed simultaneously, too many details included because removing them felt like a loss. A rebuild that begins with clarity about what the site needs to accomplish produces a different result.
Yes, but most institutional websites are not close to that point. The more common failure is too much detail poorly organized rather than too little. A website that names its audiences specifically, describes its approach clearly, and provides evidence of its work through current case studies and outcomes will read as more credible than one that covers everything at equal depth. Specificity is what creates credibility. Volume creates noise.
Frances Naty Go is the founder of Goldlilys Media, where she helps mission-driven organizations turn their websites into clear, durable systems that support meaningful work over time. She works with museums, nonprofits, health and wellness brands, higher education, life sciences, travel organizations, and expert-led businesses.
With a background in Computer Science from UC San Diego, Frances brings a thoughtful, strategic approach to building digital experiences that educate, orient, and build trust, without unnecessary complexity.
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