Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

by Krug Steve

I could list dozens of things that users shouldn’t spend their time thinking about, like Where am I? Where should I begin? Where did they put _____? What are the most important things on this page? Why did they call it that? Is that an ad or part of the site?

Faced with the fact that your users are whizzing by, there are some important things you can do to make sure they see and understand as much of what they need to know—and of what you want them to know—as possible: Take advantage of conventions Create effective visual hierarchies Break pages up into clearly defined areas Make it obvious what’s clickable Eliminate distractions Format content to support scanning

“wall of words.” They’re daunting, they make it harder for readers to keep their place, and they’re harder to scan than a series of shorter paragraphs. You may have been taught that each paragraph has to have a topic sentence, detail sentences, and a conclusion, but reading online is different. Even single-sentence paragraphs are fine.

It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice. —KRUG’S SECOND LAW OF USABILITY

I think the rule of thumb might be something like “three mindless, unambiguous clicks equal one click that requires thought.”2 2 Of course, there are exceptions. For instance, if I’m going to have to drill down through the same path in a site repeatedly, or if the pages are going to take a long time to load, then the value of fewer clicks increases.

When you can’t avoid giving me a difficult choice, you need to go out of your way to give me as much guidance as I need—but no more. This guidance works best when it’s Brief: The smallest amount of information that will help me Timely: Placed so I encounter it exactly when I need it Unavoidable: Formatted in a way that ensures that I’ll notice it

I think we talk about Web navigation because “figuring out where you are” is a much more pervasive problem on the Web than in physical spaces. We’re inherently lost when we’re on the Web, and we can’t peek over the aisles to see where we are. Web navigation compensates for this missing sense of place by embodying the site’s hierarchy, creating a sense of “there.”

Good taglines convey differentiation and a clear benefit. Jakob Nielsen has suggested that a really good tagline is one that no one else in the world could use except you,

Don’t confuse a tagline with a motto, like “We bring good things to life,” “You’re in good hands,” or “To protect and to serve.” A motto expresses a guiding principle, a goal, or an ideal, but a tagline conveys a value proposition.