Don’t Make Me Think

Web Design and “Usability”

The principles of good web design are “just common sense” and you can learn to apply them. A great website must have usability, in that it must work for customers, serve your purposes and be easy to use. If clients find your site difficult to use, they’ll avoid it, and yet there’s no single right approach to designing a website.

To begin, simplify your site. “Don’t make me think!” is the “first law of usability.” People should never be confused about what to do, where to go or what to click to find what they want. Make everything on your site “obvious and clickable.” If your users have to ask about how things work, they’ll get distracted. Even if their “mental chatter” only lasts “a fraction of a second,” it’s too long. Users should never, ever have to ask, “Where am I?” or “Where should I begin?”

What you can’t “make...self-evident,” make “self-explanatory.” Design your website to answer people’s questions with a few words. Usability is a form of courtesy, so be polite to your users. When people enter your site, they begin with a half-full “reservoir of goodwill.” An organized home page fills that reservoir to the top. If you leave...