Why Your Website Is Too Complicated (And How To Fix It)

After building over 200 Shopify stores, Ben Sharf has discovered that nearly every e-commerce brand—whether doing $1 million or $50 million annually—describes their website as a source of frustration rather than growth. In this episode, we explore why complexity has become the norm and exactly how to fix it. Ben, co-founder of Platter, shares insights from working with brands that have accumulated technical debt through widget overload, deleted apps that leave code behind, and convoluted customer journeys that kill conversions. We dig into his three-part simplification framework, the power of cart drawers over cart pages, and why revenue per visitor matters more than you think. Key Point Timestamps: 05:00 - Why e-commerce websites frustrate every brand 09:30 - The widget overload problem destroying your site speed 14:20 - Deleted apps leave code behind (and slow you down) 17:40 - The three-part simplification framework 22:30 - Revenue per visitor: the metric you're not tracking 31:00 - How to optimize clicks to purchase 35:40 - Mobile simplification mistakes killing conversionsWhy E-commerce Websites Frustrate Every Brand (05:00) Ben's journey into e-commerce infrastructure began at GoPuff, where he built an instant delivery business unit. Whilst partnering with brands of all sizes, he encountered the same pattern repeatedly: every single brand had a horror story about their website. "E-commerce is literally selling a product on the internet," Ben reflects. "Why is the main thing the most frustrating thing for every brand out there?" The answer lies in how traditional development agencies operate. When agencies get paid for their time, they're incentivised to make things expensive and complicated. This creates an industry-wide problem where brands pay enormous sums for solutions that should be straightforward, resulting in websites burdened by excessive code, countless third-party apps, and convoluted customer journeys.The Widget Overload Problem (09:30) One of the biggest contributors to website complexity is what Ben calls "widget overload"—the tendency to add small applications for every specific functionality. "A lot of these apps are features, not products," Ben explains. "If you piece a million together, you end up having a lot of different single points of failure within your storefront." The Shopify app ecosystem, whilst brilliant for getting started, creates a temptation to solve every problem by installing another app. Before long, brands find themselves managing dozens of applications, each adding code to their storefront, each creating potential conflicts. Ben shares a typical scenario: "We'll talk to a brand doing $20 million on their storefront. Over the last seven years, they've had five different agencies, seven different freelancers, and 150 apps installed and deleted—all on the same storefront. What do you think happens when the next person tries to go in and touch that? It's just a spider web."The Hidden Code Problem (14:20) Here's something most brand owners don't know: when you delete a Shopify app, the code it injected into your storefront doesn't disappear. It stays there, silently slowing down your site and creating technical debt that compounds over time. This revelation shocked many listeners, but it explains why sites become progressively slower even when brands think they're cleaning up by removing unused apps. The orphaned code remains, affecting page speed and creating a tangled web of potential conflicts.The Three-Part Simplification Framework (17:40) Ben's approach to escaping the complexity trap centres on three core principles: consolidation, clarity, and customer-centricity. Consolidation Over Accumulation: Rather than adding another app for every need, Ben advocates for consolidating functionality. Platter's solution was to...