I designed my very first website in the spring of 1999. Since I'm not a graphic designer—although I have a keen eye for design—I've been marketing myself as a minimalist designer. The advantages of a minimalist design:

• User-friendly - much easier for people to find what they're looking for.
• Search engine friendly - much easier for search engines to crawl and index.
• Faster download speeds - since a minimalist design uses fewer graphics as eye candy, the pages download much quicker (good for both people and search engines).

This morning, I read an article by Mohammad Moradi entitled 15+ Inspirational Examples of Website Redesign. What I found looking at the before and after screen shots is that the vast majority are utilizing a minimalist design.