When I signed up with the SEOBook website I saw a list of recommended reading materials for online marketers, web designers etc. One of those books on the list that looked like an interesting read was Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, by Steve Krug. It looked interesting because it wasn’t the normal, heavy, programming books I usually seem to end up reading. It was more about the fundamentals of web usability, making a website that actually makes sense to navigate for a user.
I think as someone who thinks like a programmer, it’s very easy to miss this vital part of the puzzle completely and actually make a website that is overly complex, hard to navigate or just overwhelming at first glance. So I was quite keen to see if this would offer any inspirational ideas to improve my sites.
Don’t Make Me Think
The first thing that struck me about the book is the writing style, its very light, funny and easy to read. The author isn’t a technical person and his writing reflects that, he really gives you the perspective of the end user, something that it is so easy to miss. From the very first paragraph it really got me starting to see some things that should have been staring me in the face and I started to get all sorts of ideas of how I could tweak or even redesign some of my sites.
The book is actually quite a small and light read, at just under 200 pages many of which have lots of images, it is possible to get through the whole thing in one or two good sessions. It’s broken into 12 chapters ranging from Design 101 to how to get usability testing on 10 cents a day.
Many of the pages show real site examples of what the author considers to be good and bad site usability. He shows sites with good navigation, good light homepages and it really helps to focus the mind on what an average user will see the first time they hit your page.
One of the things that really struck a chord with me was the chapter on removing needless words from text. Now I know I have a real problem with being overly wordy when I write things, just look at this review lol. But it really got me thinking about how a user skims a page and doesn’t read it in detail. So an excessive amount of wordy text is just going to annoy them.
Another thing it spends a lot of time going over is navigation in all it’s aspects. From the quick navigation through site areas through to the detailed sidebars for deep navigation. It really got me thinking about the navigation of some of my sites and how I could improve them.
Real World Application
After I finished the book, I was overloaded with ideas on how I could improve a particular site of mine, so I decided to put it to the test and see how I could improve the usability of the site. Here is a link to the result on my caravan rental website, personally I think it’s a big improvement on the old design, but I’d be very interested to hear what any readers think.
Link to Caravan Rental Website.
Buy Don’t Make Me Think!, From Amazon UK
Your Thoughts
If you’ve read this book or are planning to read it I’d love to get your thoughts on it. Please leave a comment below or mention this post of facebook, twitter etc. All feedback is welcome so feel free to comment or drop me an email on this or any subject.
