Yes, absolutely.
I guess what I meant by that is that if our goal is to acquire or retain a user, the parameter is not how easy the experience is, but how easy it is compared to what they came to us initially thinking. The premise of this is the fact that people tend to have certain brainpower allocations based on how complex they think the experience could be. When you want to book an airline ticket online, you don’t go a website expecting to make a lot of effort. Therefore, if the website makes you put in a lot of effort, you are likely to quit it and go look for another one. Compare that to when you want to rent a new flat or buy a new car: Many people would want the website from which they buy a new car to be information-rich, with many filters and suggestions and all sorts of useful information. Thus, even though the website from which you find a new car to buy might be a lot more complex than the one from which you get your airline ticket, you might still be more comfortable with the first one because you’re going into it already willing to put in effort and interpreting all the bells and whistles as useful rather than distracting.

One other thing that I would like to point out given that you were kind enough to inquire about my take on this is if your product is positioned correctly to have people allotting a good amount of energy going in, it doesn’t make sense to go fully minimal and not take advantage of that, in my opinion. The minimalism and simplicity could be the very competitive advantage of your product but if it’s not, why waste the real estate you just scored in the user’s mind? Additionally, suppose a bank has figured out a way to give out loans by having people fill out a small form online. Now if you are like me and come from a country where it takes a very long procedure to get that loan, and if it’s the first time you encounter this service, it might feel fraudulent. So that’s basically what I wanted to say by “managing the delta” between how simple it is and how simple we think it should be.