So says Irene Pereyra in the.net magazine article "10 steps to an engaging interactive user experience" from December 2011:
You may think this is obvious and doesn’t need further explanation. But most sites and applications still manage to get it wrong. The key is to cut down tasks required by users to the bare minimum. I can’t stress this enough. Get rid of all that extra clutter that doesn’t add value, or worse, distracts and confuses the user. Know exactly how you want users to travel through your site or application and then guide the user as if you were holding their hand through the entire process. Again, users want things to be as simple, worry-free and fast as possible. If they can see what’s coming next before even clicking on something, they’ll be happy users.
I'd change the "Know exactly how you want users to travel through your site..." to "Know exactly what users are trying to accomplish...," but that's a sentiment the author gets to in the following paragraph, so I won't nitpick too much.