Benin Brown

10:43 AM | Posted by Benin | Edit Post
So I am reading Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think and its one of the most awesome books that I've ever read-period!  Seriously, the book's about web site usability and contains tons of insights that I'd highly recommend to anyone that publishes or maintains a web site or even a blog for that matter.

The Premise of Don't Make Me Think

The premise of the book is that as businesses or content publishers we only have a few milliseconds to capture our audience's attention.  Because if we don't the competition is only one click away.

But what resonates with me is the author's candid no non-sense tell it like it is approach to the subject of web site usability.

For example...

For instance he starts the book by sort of building upon the title of the book, "Don't Make Me Think".  What he's getting at is that when it comes to the Internet, all of us really just want sites that are simple to navigate and intuitive to the point where we are not forced by the site to ask ourselves little questions like, "what's this for?",  "what do they mean by this phrase?", "are they trying to say such and such?", or my personal favorite, "can I click this?".  So if your site makes people ask themselves those types of questions, then no matter how many bells and whistles you've got plugged into it...they just wont help you much.

The Bottom Line

So what's the point why would I be mentioning usability on a site that's supposed to be about serious Internet marketing???  Well, it's like this...If you're going to spend the time and resources to market and get the people to visit your site, wouldn't you rather that the customer or reader doesn't make it to the site just to bounce off less than a minute later due to usability mishaps?  I thought so...and that was my point and if you haven't done so already please buy the book.  By the way, its an e-book so if you head over and purchase it you wont even need to wait for shipping.