When I first built AllInOneTools, I made a simple decision:
Add more categories → help users find tools faster.
So I kept adding.
Image tools
PDF tools
SEO tools
Converters
Calculators
Security tools
Social tools
Eventually…
I had 12 categories on the homepage.
At first, it felt complete.
But then I started questioning something:
Does more categories help users…
or overwhelm them?
What users actually do
Most users don’t explore everything.
They scan.
They try to spot their category instantly.
If they see it → they click.
If they don’t → they hesitate.
And hesitation is dangerous.
The real trade-off
More categories means:
✔ Better coverage
✔ Easier tool discovery
But also:
❌ More cognitive load
❌ More visual complexity
At some point…
More becomes worse.
What I’m testing now
I’m experimenting with:
• Showing fewer categories
• Showing clearer categories
• Showing more tools inside each
Instead of just adding more sections.
Because clarity matters more than quantity.
Curious how others approach this:
How many categories do you think is ideal on a homepage?
• Less than 5?
• 5–10?
• 10+?
At what point does it become too much?
Top comments (7)
"7 items" ± 2, that is Miller's Law.
From "Don't Make Me Think" by Stephen Krug. Circa 7 is easy to recognize, handle, memorize.
(While 7 was the original limit, newer research and modern web usability often suggest that 3 to 5 items is a safer, more efficient range to reduce cognitive load further.)
That’s a great point. Miller’s Law explains a lot of what I’m seeing in real usage.
When I had 12 categories, users didn’t explore more — they just scanned harder. Now I’m testing fewer, clearer categories with better grouping, and it already feels easier to use.
Curious if you’ve seen better results with strict limits like 5, or flexible grouping works better in practice?
I'd say the limit isn't strictly 5, but "the minimum you can get." I would use a flexible approach, though I don't have any concrete data on this.
For me, the real answer came from watching users.
They don’t count categories.
They scan for their category.
If they find it instantly, the number doesn’t matter.
But if they need to search visually, even 6 categories feel like too many.
On AllInOneTools, I now focus less on “how many”
and more on “how fast users recognize their category.”
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