The title speaks for itself. Don't Make Me Think... but personally, I'd add a pretty please because I am basically begging you. There is almost nothing worse than visiting a website and being completely lost in a sea of links, text, and irrelevant information that I want to make go away. We've all been there and for some reason, it happens a lot more often than it should. And most of the time, it's the one thing I'm truly looking for that I can't seem to find. Why? Because I have no direction, nothing is making sense, and my all-time favorite- there is way too much to choose from.
I am so glad that Steve Krug wrote this book. So many of us need it, and I'm not just talking about some of the awfully confusing websites I've visited. I'm talking about all of us that have a website, are creating a website, will create a website, etc. Krug said "most of what I do is just common sense." And I have to say I agree. But I think a lot of the times when you are creating a website, it's hard to be on the other side of the screen, as the individual who knows nothing about the content you're displaying. There are times when things seem so obvious that they scream "Click Me", when in reality, they just don't.
"There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home." Looks like little Dorothy was right, even though she wasn't quite referring to a website's home page. Krug mentioned the importance of the home button, which is basically like my best friend when I visit a website... even the websites I am already familiar with. I know Krug also mentioned the back button as the most-used feature of web browsers, but my click back home definitely beats the back button; although it doesn't surprise me that the back button is the most popular action while surfing a website. But for me, clicking that over and over gets me more frustrated than starting fresh from mi casa (my house). Home is the heart of the webpage. If I land there, I can find anything I've ever dreamed of. And if I can't, you're just not doing something right.
As I read Don't Make Me Think, I thought of all the sites in all the land that have given me trouble after another. More specifically, it was a listserv site that I had to visit often during my position as secretary of an organization. It was probably one of the worst websites I've ever been to. I quickly realized that making a website easy to browse through is extremely important. I wasted a lot of my life trying to figure that website out... like a lot. And If I'm being completely honest, that website just made me feel plain stupid and I'm almost positive that's not the way you want your visitors to feel. But, if for some reason you just can't manage to make your site easy to comprehend at first glance, at least have really, really great directions to make it as clear as clear gets. Well, the listserv website did have directions. I'll give them credit for that. But they were most certainly not clear. In fact, they confused me even more because I couldn't even figure out what directions matched the action I was trying to complete. Lets talk about a headache. Anyways, I finally taught myself how to navigate through that website by the middle of the semester. And just like that, I was deemed a genius.
Usability is the word of the day. If your website has that, you're already off to a great start. It doesn't take much to satisfy me when it comes to websites. I just need some fun colors and to know where I'm going before I click it. And if not, at least let me get back where I first started.... back home. Pretty please.
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