We’ve definitely entered the digital age. While technology used to be seen as overly complicated and hard to understand, customers rated technology companies as some of the simplest brands in Siegel+Gale’s 2011 Global Brand Simplicity Index, a report based on a survey of more than 6,000 consumers in seven countries. Electronics and appliance brands take up six spots in the top 20. Internet brands do even better—with Google and Amazon heading up the entire global list.

This result reflects the real progress that technology companies have made in recent years to create better experiences for their customers. Some of this is due to technical advances that make products easier to use (touch screens, lightweight materials, broadband Internet, etc.), and some is due to a conscious effort by certain companies to focus on what’s important to customers.

A prime example is Apple (No. 5 on the global list), which pares its products down to the basics, both in form and function. It only sells a few products, and tightly controls every aspect from production to sale to ensure the entire customer experience meets its standards.

Electronics companies that don’t maintain such tight focus are perceived as much less simple. Particular examples are Panasonic and GE, who make everything from TVs to toothbrushes. Their broad portfolios lead to confusion in customers' minds about what exactly the brand is and what they do. Few customers are likely to associate either of these old-school brands with phenomenal user experiences.

Internet companies in particular have reached a new pinnacle in creating customer-focused, easy-to-use products. In the US, the top three simplest brands are Netflix, Google and Amazon. These brands have a remarkable ability to get out of the customer’s way and just help them to do what they want to do. However, they each have their own way of approaching this.

Netflix has done a great job of creating a user-friendly interface, with rollover descriptions of movies, an easy-to-manage queue and helpful recommendations. It has reliable service that gets your movies to you quickly and with minimal fuss. It made renting movies by mail simple with its return envelopes, and now it’s making it even simpler with online streaming. Netflix does one thing, and it does it well. (Of course, events like the recent Qwikster fiasco may put its top ranking in jeopardy).

By contrast, Amazon doesn’t seem very simple at all. After all, its store sells thousands of different products from thousands of different vendors and ships them all over the world. However, Amazon has laid out an interface that allows you to purchase any kind of item, from any vendor. And it’s simple. From the customer’s point of view, there really is just one store—Amazon—and that’s all they have to deal with.

Similarly, Google presents one easy point of access for all of the different content on the Internet. When it focuses on its core strengths—search and email—it provides simple services that just do what you want them to do.

The brands and industries that didn’t do as well in the Simplicity Index could learn a lot from the technology sector. Insurance companies, utilities and retail banks who focus more on the user experience and provide more online tools will have a big advantage over their competition. And as customers come to expect this from companies, anybody who doesn’t work to simplify their customer experience will be left behind.

Sarah Negugogor is a senior information architect for the Siegel+Gale New York office.