Krug: Your Website Readers Are Only a Click Away from Bailing Out

A kind and generous friend who knows me well sent me a surprise. It came in my business mailbox, it was a book called “Don’t Make Me Think,” by Steve Krug.  The point of the book was how to make your website more user-friendly and intuitive.  I’ve devoured half of the slim tome already; I like the author’s breezy and fun style.

Krug makes points about how surfing a website is very similar to the experience people have when they go into a large big box store. First they walk through the big doors and then they begin looking for signs…or else for people to help them.  Krug makes a great point about roadsigns in his native Boston and his adopted state of California.  In the former, the signs are small, not colorful, and are easily missed.

Yet in Cali, every road sign  has a green background, is lit up at night, and is virtually impossible to miss. Like websites, roadsigns need to be obvious, yet Krug finds example after example of sites that don’t make it easy to find where you are.  It’s like the great big ‘You Are Here’ sign we always search for when we find a map in a state park, or in a mall. “You are here,” is as crucial as where you can go.

Krug marvels at how many people try to type URLs into the Yahoo search box.  Or the number of people who continue to type in the entire long string of characters each time they visit a site instead of bookmarking it.  The main points he makes are that people scan, not read, most website content.  Each website reader is only a click away from bailing out at any moment.

And most importantly, if it’s not inherently easy to find the content on your website, then you better hire a usability expert and begin re-designing it so it’s easy to navigate.