Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

The scenario: the main dashboard of Ledgerly, an invoicing app for freelancers. Usage analytics show that 90% of daily sessions do one of three things: create an invoice, record a payment, or send a reminder. The toolbar below offers 24 features — and hides those three among the other 21.

What's wrong here? Twenty-four buttons, all the same size, weight, and color — the interface treats “New invoice” (used every day) exactly like “Webhooks” (used once, at setup, by 2% of accounts). The vital few are visually drowned by the trivial many, so every session starts with a scan of the whole wall.

app.ledgerly.io/dashboard

Ledgerly

Acme Design Studio · Trial

Recent invoices

INV-1042 · Kestrel & Co.$1,850.00 Due

INV-1041 · Bluenote Café$420.00 Paid

INV-1040 · Harbor Yoga$960.00 Overdue

🔍 What changed

24 equal buttons → 1 primary, 2 secondary, 21 grouped under “More” — zero features removed.
Visual weight now mirrors usage data: the daily 20% gets 100% of the prominence.
The “More” menu is organized into labeled groups (Documents, Data, Organize, Settings), so the long tail is still findable in one click.
Screen real estate freed by the toolbar goes to what users actually check: recent invoices and their status.
The decision of what earns a top-level spot is made by analytics, not by whoever shipped the feature last.

💼 Explaining it to stakeholders

“Our analytics say three actions account for nine out of ten sessions, yet on screen they get the same billing as webhooks. We're not cutting a single feature — we're letting the data decide which 20% earns its place on screen and moving the rest one click away. Users find their daily action instantly, and every team's feature is still there for the moment it's needed.”

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