Steve Krug’s Principle on Web Design
With the most successful technology- internet, we have entered the era of
information. Web page, one of the most commonly used tool human use to spread
information and for many other of purposes, such as blogs, selling products, etc.
Although there are countless of web pages in the internet, many are viewed as badly
designed. Which result in the waste of effort, because people rarely use it. The website
developer maybe skilled at the tools they are using, but still made a bad webpage. In
Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability,
Krug addresses the common mistakes we usually make when creating a website, he also
provide ways to solve these problems or improve the website.
When creating a webpage, the developer should put themselves into the point of
view of the users. Krug discussed how the users use the web pages designed by
developers. He mentioned that most of the users will not read everything from the
webpage, because the user usually go to certain page with a purpose, therefore, very
often, the user will only scan through the webpage, looking for some keywords that they
are interested in. Very often, the users will get frustrated when they fail to look for what
they want in the website. So, in order to solve this problem, Krug suggests that the
developers should omit needless contents, such as welcome statements, because users are
here for a purpose. Also, the developer should simplify the website instruction by
removing needless word, or by making the web page self-explanatory. Also, when
designing a webpage, the content should match the title of the link we clicked on,
because if the link doesn’t match the content, this will cause the users to feel frustrated,
and loss of trust about the webpage. This might result in loss of costumers/users.
Highlighting important content is also an important task, we mentioned that the
users often come here for a purpose, so it is a good idea to allow them to find the
important content in a shortest amount of time. To solve this problem, Krug introduces
visual hierarchy to solve this problem, he suggests that by separating important content
from less important content is to set the important content to bigger font, making it bold,
or use color to distinct it from less important content. One example are the websites that
provide news such as Wall Street Journal, we can easily see the headline for each news,
and we can select the one we are interested easily. Also, we should make it clear what
contents are clickable for the user, this will greatly save the user’s time.
Providing a navigation for the user is also important. Very often, users get into a
website, but don’t know how to get started, because the website contain too much
information in it, and the user have to find what they want by reading the website,
because there is no proper navigation for the website. In order to provide a good
navigation. Krug suggest the developers to create well an organized structure for the
website, starting from the home page. Based on Krug, the home page for the website
should include the all the details about the website, for example, a ecommerce home page
should include all the products and services, customer service, etc. In order to this task,
dividing products and services into clickable sections is a good option, this will clearly
show the users what this website is for, and the users can use small amount of effort to
figure all this out. The website should also include a search option as well, this is very
effective for the users, especially when the users know what they want to do in the first
place. With this design, the homepage should be short and concise, but all the
information a user will need to use the website properly. For the subpage of a website, the
page should include the clickable site ID on the left top corner for that webpage,
indicating the user is using the developer’s webpages and allow the users to get back to
the homepage easily. Also, providing a breadcrumbs will clearly notify the users is on the
right track or not. All subpage should be short and concise, and the content should match
to the title of the link that get the user to this subpage. With all these navigation, the users
can adapt to use a well-organized website quickly.
In conclusion, there are countless of websites in the internet, so each developer is
competing against other developers. Among all these websites, only few of them are
consider to be successful. It means that creating a website is not hard, but it is hard to
create a good website. In Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense
Approach to Web Usability, Krug concludes what makes a good website, and what
makes a good website. Making a good website is important for website developers, Krug
conclude that “If we find something that works, we stick to it.” Therefore, making a good
website can potentially increase the number of users who have use your website only
once.