Here's a thought that changes how you see your own website: your visitors spend most of their time on other people's websites, not yours. Every habit they have was learned somewhere else.
What is Jakob's Law?
It's named after usability expert Jakob Nielsen, who pointed out that because people spend most of their time on other sites, they expect yours to work the same way as the ones they already know.
When a site behaves the way people expect, they don't have to think about how to use it. They can think about what they came for.
The conventions people rely on
- A logo in the top left that takes you back to the homepage
- The main menu across the top, or behind a menu icon on phones
- Contact details and useful links in the footer
- Underlined or clearly coloured text for links
- A basket icon in the top right of an online shop
Moving any of these somewhere unexpected rarely feels creative to a visitor. It usually just feels confusing.
Where it comes up in our work
Take a travel agency website. People have booked holidays and flights online many times before, and they arrive knowing roughly where to find destinations, dates and a way to get in touch. Following those patterns lets the photography and the offers do the talking.
Familiar doesn’t mean boring
Jakob's Law is about how a site works, not how it looks. Keep the navigation, buttons and forms predictable, and put your personality into the colours, type, photography and words. That's where a brand should stand out.
Your turn
Is there anything on your website that works differently from what visitors would expect? Would they miss it if it worked the usual way?