the rules

Been thinking a lot about rules put forth by gurus. A woman recently put forth a post on […]

Been thinking a lot about rules put forth by gurus. A woman recently put forth a post on the SIGIA list about how some higher-ups came back from a conference with a bag full of rules she was now expected to live by. They included:

1. “3 goals of a site have to be identified to determine the direction and voice for the site”

2. “There should only be a maximum of seven links on each page, more than that and we lose the user. It’s just too many choices.”

3. “Users won’t click on items they believe are advertisements. Banner ads only work if they appear on the right side of the page.”

4. “Users are trained to respond to “blue” or underlined items on a site to get somewhere else.

5. “There is no need for a button and a text click through (to the same page) on the same page.”

Each of these “rules” is derived from a larger, smarter principal that someone has apparently determined is too complex for the idiots building websites.

Let’s take a look:

1. “3 goals of a site have to be identified to determine the direction and voice for the site”

Let’s translate this one: determine the goals of the site before you start building it. Goals need to come form multiple sources:

What are the business goals? (customer loyalty? investor excitement?)
What are the engineering goals? (easy to maintain? extensible?)
What are the sales goals? (more banner space? Customized pages for cobranding opportunities?)
What are the marketing goals? (reinforced branding?)
What are the user’s goals?(I want to learn? find? buy? I need it to load fast? Work on my 3.0 browser?)

It’s called requirements gathering, and no site should be built without it.

New rule: Do requirements gathering before you start designing a site

2. “There should only be a maximum of seven links on each page, more than that and we lose the user. It’s just too many choices.”

A better way to look at this would be “not everything can be the most important thing on a page” A page has to have a visual hierarchy and organization to make sense. Which means somebody gets to have their stuff in the top left corner of the homepage, and someone gets be below the fold. It is important to understand user tolerance of information but people can take a lot more than one might suppose if it is designed well. And sites with only seven links often look empty (I’ve seen this in user testing) belying the wealth of content that lies below.

New rule: Prioritize your page elements. Design a clear page hiearchy.

3. “Users won’t click on items they believe are advertisements. Banner ads only work if they appear on the right side of the page.”

It doesn’t matter where you put the ads, if people think they are worthless they won’t click it. I found the eyetracking study very interesting– it showed people’s eyes were looking at banners. yet Neilsen’s banner blindness study showed people have no memory of seeing ads. To me that suggests that some lovely tiny bit of people’s brains is quickly taking everything in, deciding what is valuable and trashing what isn’t.

What is quite more valuable is designing ads that show the value of whatever is being offered and place them where they have meaning. So ads for a credit card don’t make much sense on a greeting card site, but ads for flowers, chocolate, etc do. especially when placed at that important “susceptible moment”– you’ve just sent a card.. don’t you want to send a present too?

People don’t want to be offered stuff they don’t want. it’s as simple as that.

New rule: Make ads contextual and meaningful whenever possible

4. “Users are trained to respond to “blue” or underlined items on a site to get somewhere else.”

They were. and then every site on the web changed the rules (except maybe Jakob).

They key principal here is “make a link look clickable” make it a different color, make it a button, underline it– do something to say “click me.”

I’ve been in a lot of tests recently where people used “Braille” to find links– they ran their mouse across the page and watched for the hand to show up. Kinda of a cruel thing to force users to do, no?
see earlier post on links

New rule: make links look clickable. Don’t make non-links look like links

5. “There is no need for a button and a text click through (to the same page) on the same page.”

I’m going with a flat “no” on this one: I think the real issue is “Should you have multiple ways to get to the same page on the same page.” In a recent usability test of a large entertainment site, you could get to each piece of content by clicking on the thumbnail, the headline or the “click here” link that appeared after a short description. Some users used the image, some the title and some the “click here” link. None of them hesitated or were confused as to where to link– I believe because each found a link they recognized would work for them.

I recently was shopping for a cd, and couldn’t figure out how to purchase it. There was no “buy now” button. However the price was linked to the shopping cart. I didn’t know that, and I started clicking randomly on things until I managed to hit the price link. Bah.

Why did I put up with this frustration? Honestly, it was the cheapest price on this particular cd. If it wasn’t, I would have just bought it from Amazon.

New rule: support different people’s ways of doing things (support different mental models)

Got an expert’s pronouncement you need debunked or re-interpreted? write me

Hungry for more? IBM has a terrific article that goes after “the rules” of software design: Debunking the myths of UI design.