Lemon Foundation

When was the last time you opened up a website and you asked yourself what you were supposed to be doing, or better yet, how you were supposed to be doing it?

When building for the web, there are a few constants that you always need to bear in mind, since everything pretty much flows from there.  They’re not absolutes, but like a good reliable car they should get you on your way, at least to a point where you can iterate.

For starters, you’ve got about 10 to 20 seconds (depending on whom you talk to) before your user will decide whether they should stick around or not.  Some people would argue less, but the bottom line is that if your message is not clear and easy to digest, you’re already off to a bad start.

Secondly, most English speaking people read top left to bottom right, so if your most important information is not within that top left triangle of their screen, then they’re going to take longer to find the good stuff.  If they take longer to find the good stuff, then you’ve lost them (see point above).  Make it easy for them to find the most important information they’re looking for, and they’ll keep coming back.

Why is the iPod so successful, apart from the massive amount of marketing behind it?  Because it’s simple and easy to use, understand and digest – it does what it says on the tin.  Which brings us to the next point – wherever possible, users will opt for the simpler, cleaner way of doing things than the dogs breakfast way of doing things.  We’re constantly bombarded by information and data, so getting a users attention and then making it easy for them to take an action (like click for more information) should always be your preference.

Intuition is a difficult thing, because one individual’s intuition is another person’s mystery.  That said, when things just work it’s generally because they’re intuitive – so if you’re offering a shopping cart, then intuition says it’s easy and simple to find what’s in my shopping basket.  Likewise, if you’re asking people to interact with others on a website, then you should be making it easy for them to engage in that interaction.  If you’re asking people to submit sensitive personal data, then intuition might suggest that if you help people to get over their fears about submitting sensitive data by telling them what you’re doing to protect them, you’re more likely to have more people actually completing the form (and thus make more money).

The above are subtle things which basically ask you to respect people as intelligent web users (most people have been using the web for at least 5 years now, so we’re all used to it’s vagaries) that will simply exercise their right to go elsewhere if you don’t make them happy. 

In general web users respond better to simpler, clearer, cleaner, intuitive interfaces, so give them what they want, and you’ll ultimately benefit from it!