Ten Undeniable Truths of Web Design

By: Joe Grant - Grant Consulting Inc.

Based on observations of many people using a variety of web sites, this list is offered for anyone designing a web site.

Users are horribly impatient.
People want to go Home.
Links should not be guesswork.
Fewer and simpler words are better.
People hate slow downloads.
The more they Search the worse it gets.
People want a map, not a picture.
The Boardroom Experience hurts the Customer Experience.
What you don't know is hurting you.
Finding successful web site designs is not hard.

1. Users are horribly impatient.

Understanding this Undeniable Truth makes all of the other Truths clear. Your customers coming to your web site have little tolerance and patience for your site and will ruthlessly abandon it with little justification. For "dot.com" companies, this spells the difference between the life and death of their business.

If you are a web user, you already understand these strong feelings of impatience. How do you feel after going down three or four "wrong turns" on a web site? How happy are to sit through the download of a huge graphic when you simply want to read the web page?

The younger the users are and the more experienced they are with the web, the greater their impatience. Furthermore, once people find what they want, they want the content to be easy to read.

In real estate, the three most important rules are "Location, location, and location." On the web, the rules are "Speed, speed, and speed."

2. People want to go Home.

Users rely on Home. When they are having problems with your site, which will happen at some point, the link Home provides their first lifeline back to a safe spot. And once people recognize that they are consistently offered a way Home, they are more likely to feel comfortable in venturing to other parts of the site.

When users can't find Home or a better navigational path, they use the Back button. Many people find the lack of Home to be very annoying, especially if they have to hit the Back button several times before they become comfortably re-oriented on the site.

By the way, some users will not recognize Home unless it is spelled out with text. So, even if your logo looks great and you've put it in a standard spot, such as the top left, I recommend that you explicitly label the image as 'Home' just to be safe.

3. Links should not be guesswork.

I used to say that "Plain old blue and purple hypertext work best." And it still is clearest way for users recognize a link. However, people have become more accustomed to non-standard link colors.

Having said that, too many web sites still make users guess at what is a link and what is not a link. I can vividly recall one web site study I did where the color of links changed with nearly every page. In some cases the links had the same color as the regular text on the page. This lack of consistency caused users to miss links or hesitate when they did find the links.

If your users are left to think that your links and your non-links could be any color at any time, they may as well as click anywhere. When that is the case, people will simply not find links that are necessary to move forward on your site.

I recommend the following:

Maintain a standard throughout the site for link colors.
Have one color for all unvisited links.
Have another color for all visited links.
Have a clearly different look for text that does not belong to a link.

4. Fewer and simpler words are better.

When people are looking for answers they skim pages very quickly. They want the text to quickly tell them whether or not they are on the right track. When they believe they've come to a page that potentially has the desired answer, they want the text there to quickly prove itself to be worth reading. And they want the text to be easy to read.

Anyone writing for the web needs to realize it is different than print media. For the time being, computer monitors are much more tiring to read than paper. Unlike books or magazines, web users are not expecting and do not want eloquence in their text. The words don't even have to form sentences. In fact, where appropriate, lists of statements and tables are preferable.

Web readers disdain text that is not straightforward. They dislike commercial-sounding phrases, and anything that sacrifices clarity for the sake of sounding impressive, especially jargon. The text can become more prosaic at the point where users clearly have arrived at their desired content. The article's beginning should provide a summary or an outline. The text can become more detailed later.

One important corollary to this Truth: On a web site, state who you are and what you do concisely, in concrete terms, and in a conspicuous way. Being very impatient, the user does not want to play detective and hunt through a number of pages to understand you, especially the first time they come to your site. Immediately inform your customers if you and your services are relevant and useful to them, preferably on the home page.

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5. People hate slow downloads.

This Undeniable Truth is closely related to the first Truth that users are horribly impatient. With regard to download time, a lot of web site decision-makers forget that everyone doesn't have a T1 line. Unrequested large animations and images are very aggravating. The common reaction from people forced to sit through the loading and playback of a large Flash animation is to shake their heads, and perhaps laugh in exasperation. Not a great way to make a first impression with a customer.

This doesn't mean that large files, images, or animation shouldn't be on web sites. People going to a movie review site want to see trailers of movies in which they are interested. Radio sites that provide archived programs and museums that provide large, high-resolution images are giving people what they want. But don't make users sit through a large download until you told them what to expect and they have indicated that they want it. Show users the file size or a time estimate immediately next to the link of the large image or file.

If possible, provide straight HTML versions of large PDF documents. PDFs are not always wanted, and Adobe Reader has its own usability problems.

In summary, slow download times aggravate customers and greatly increase the likelihood that their visit ends in abandonment.

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6. The more they Search the worse it gets.

One of the long-standing debates in the web design community is whether or not to include Search on a web site. Some experts insist a web site must have it; others insist it should be left off.

The Undeniable Truth of it is that the more times that people use Search to find something in particular, the worse things get. Typically, if users don't find what they want in the first couple of tries, they won't find it. After the first couple of tries, people will either quit or they will get into a vicious cycle of trial and error and mounting frustration. Some of the most agonizing moments I've witnessed in usability testing occurred when people were using Search.

My advice: first create your design as if you will not have a Search feature. Figure out the most common and critical reasons for people to find something, and design the appropriate navigation. For example, if you were designing the means to search within the archives of a newspaper, perhaps your users would be better served with a subject index, or a timeline, or milestones within a time period. Then, after you have dutifully tested your early design prototypes with users, go ahead and add a Search feature. Just don't make it the only obvious way for people to find things, because many won't.

(By the way, for Internet Explorer users, I heartily recommended the Google Toolbar at google.com. It's the best way I know to find most things within a web site.)

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7. People want a map, not a picture.

On company web sites, many organizations publish a site structure and navigation that is a picture faithful to how the organization sees itself. But that is not the best scheme for customers. Instead, they want a good map oriented for novices to easily find their way to popular destinations.

Good maps omit most details and exaggerate the easiest and most common paths. The generalizations of fact and omissions of detail necessary in good map-making will not be welcomed by everyone in an organization, especially any parts of the company that are not explicitly shown on the home page. However, if a company truly wants their web site to serve a business function for their customer, then the company must accept the need to communicate simply and clearly with respect to the customer's mindset.

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8. The Boardroom Experience hurts the Customer Experience.

The Customer is Always Right is one of the oldest maxims in business. Unfortunately, the Boardroom Experience (or the Demo Experience) often sacrifices the needs of customers or other people using the web site.

The Boardroom Experience occurs when top management and decision-makers of a web site watch a demo staged by the people that develop the site. In contrast, the Customer Experience occurs for actual customers when they use the site. Of course, the real business of the web site occurs not in the boardroom, but with the customer.

9. What you don't know is hurting you.

Most decision-makers of web sites don't really know how the site is doing. Or they don't understand why it is not doing very well. For example, a web retailer may wonder why so many users abandon the site once they take the "shopping cart" to the checkout area.

Many site managers lack meaningful customer feedback. Without using methods that allow for them to observe what happens with customers using their web sites, they will continue to operate in the dark. They are effectively operating a business blindly.

The best businesses depend on usability testing or user-centered design methods for their web sites. Web businesses that do not know what is going on with their customers will simply not be around in the long run.

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10. Finding successful web site designs is not hard.

Have you ever heard of Yahoo!? What about Amazon? Ebay? While there is some danger is assuming that whatever the most visited web sites do is the right thing to do, these designs generally provide good examples of how to treat customers.

There is no mystery as to why these sites do well. People can use them, and they come back to use them again and again. Review the Undeniable Truths against the sites of these multibillion-dollar companies that have tens of millions of users, and then review the Truths against your web site design.

Undeniably, the truth is most web site designs could be far more successful. It all starts with putting the design focus on your customer.

Joe Grant provides usability testing and interface design services for organizations in St. Louis and across the United States.
This article is an update of an earlier article posted on August 3, 2000.