When someone looks at your website you have a little less than a minute to capture the viewer’s attention. In that short time span you have to engage your viewer almost instantly and if your page isn’t up to snuff, goodbye viewer. So, what can you do to keep your viewer’s interest? Well, Krug outlines various ways starting with “don’t make your viewer think.” In fact, it is Krug’s First Law of Usability.
Your viewer should be able to “get it” – what it is and how to use it – without expending any energy, after all you have less than a minute to keep your viewer interested. For instance, icons on the front page should be labeled as “pictures”, “about me”, “contact me”, not “graphicland”, “moi”, “let’s chat”. The navigation through your site should be obvious enough that thinking is hardly required. Essentially, your main objective when creating a website should be eliminating your viewer’s question marks.
On the other hand, if you can’t make something self-evident at least make it self-explanatory (so it only requires a little mental effort). Make your page so easy to navigate it’ll make your user squeal with excitement (I don’t know if squealing will actually happen, but they’ll at least be a little pumped). The content is where you can put your originality and creativity to work, leaving your viewer wanting more. However, in the case of your page – give your viewer everything they could want and more.
So for simplicities’ sake, let me break it down for you:
- Intuitive: like Jimmy John’s, the site should be so navigable the viewer will freak
- Scannable: the content should be broken up so the viewer can scan the page and pick up the gist of what you are saying in a matter of seconds
- Use of conventions: essentially graphics that are universal and let your user click on the image without a sliver of a doubt (i.e. the shopping cart icon leads them to the check-out)
- Do not reinvent the wheel: use these conventions and use them well my friends, they’re universal for a reason
- Visual hierarchies: write like a journalist (i.e. inverted pyramid of most important info. first, least important last)
- Use headings: duh.
- No extra noise: let your content speak for itself
- Highlight: if something is important, show your reader (see what I did there?)
- Rule of Clicks: the user should only have to click to something in 3-4 clicks and it should be as painless as possible (i.e. Contact us > Advertising Department > Advertising Director > Bingo: Betty 555-5555)
- No nonsense: get your point across in as concise a way as possible and get rid of all that fluff
I’m a shopping addict, so the Piperlime site is as intuitive as anything I could ever want. Literally, you go to the page and immediately you are greeted with gorgeous pieces that you want in your wardrobe in a clickable scrolling headline. There is a tool bar across the top, the logo is in the left corner and daily deals are mentioned at the very top. Then you click on what you want.
Like I said I have an addiction so the “What’s New” tab is my go to – I literally already have the old pieces memorized and categorized, it’s sad. At this point you now have the option of clicking several different categories and shortcuts to get where you want to go, i.e. OP Picks (Olivia Palermo and her fashion fluency, of course). Or, I mean you could just look at the entire list of new goodies right then and there (where I then add 30 new items to my shopping basket – do they have a shopaholics anonymous?)
Questions to ponder:
1. How simple is too simple?
2. Is re-creating the wheel ever useful?
Source of Image: http://piperlime.gap.com/browse/home.do
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