I had a very interesting conversation with a client yesterday in which she told me she has too much room in her store. "I have to buy all this inventory to fill it," she said. And like most of us, she isn't rolling around in extra cash with which she can do that. But without that inventory, the space looks desolate and her store looks weakened. It's a stickey wicket. As a result, she's looking for new space down the street in what will probably be a much better location for her.

It got me thinking: can web sites have too much space? The answer is a not-quite-resounding yes. More like a yes, but...

An important part of what we do is help clients develop their web content and messaging. And it's not uncommon for a client to tell me he needs a Services and an About page. Now, for small businesses, this is quite often the same thing. But the business owner will end up splitting up the content into smaller bites just so he has more pages on his site.

From a search perspective, this might actually do more good than harm, because the site will have more pages to crawl and more opportunities to have keywords and meta descriptions. But from a usability point of view, I feel like it's the equivalent of walking into a store without enough inventory to fill the space. Like a massive great room that has a couch and a television. Echoey. Poorly designed. And unnecessary.

What do you think?