The number one rule for easy to use sites: Don’t make me think!

I’ve started to read a book called Don’t make me think by Steve Krug. In the introduction he explains how, as a web designer – his fellow web designers would ask him for his number one tip for making usable sites – the answer of which is highlighted above.

The concept behind the tip (and the book) is that sites should be built to be as intuative as possible. By using convention, recognised keywords, and just a dash of common sense, website designs and layouts should be so comfortable to use, that a new visitor to the site should be able to automatically achieve their aims without even thinking about what they’re doing.

I’m only about a 3rd of the way though the book so far, so I’ve still got a lot to learn – but so far it’s covered some very interesting things, such as:

• Number of words used on a page – as Krug himself says (if I remember correctly) “you should remove about half of the words on every page of the site, and then remove half again”.
• Tabs – people understand tabs and other visual indicators which help highlight where in a site someone currently is.
• Keyword conventions – if people want to search on a site – provide them with a input field labeled “search” – not “quick-search”, not “find”, or anything else.

There is far more to good design than just these examples, but I think that taking a comon sense approach, and trying to not be too flashy, should end with good results.

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