When I have some spare time, I find it valuable to revisit a book or reference that I've found to be exceptional or influential in how I approach and do my job. This weekend I had the opportunity to revisit Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2nd Edition). If I had a single book to get people up to speed on 'why the web is different,' I think Steve Krug's little book conveys the message. Many folks come at the web from traditional marketing or technology, neither which has all the answers.
I came across the section titled "Happy Talk Must Die" and I reflected that 13+ years into this medium we still find ourselves fighting with the same problems of approaching the web as print brochure, advertisement, or desktop application. The section talks about the fluffy and worthless "self-congratulatory promotional writing" that ends up on web pages. I too am guilty of raising the white flag when I've heard phrases such as, "The CEO wants it there", "It won't hurt anything and it will make the Marketing people happy" among others. You can't win every battle and it certainly isn't worth your job to take a stand on web page text but it continues to be a problem. It's not that people are stupid (not all of them at least) but it's our nature to look at problems through our 'lens of experience'.
While the medium is not new, the level of understanding of 'how people use it' hasn't grown in proportion to adoption. I would anecdotally suggest it's gotten worse. Today, we have integrated the web into daily lives. From map directions to real-time banking it is difficult to recall a time when we didn't have it. People have learned to use the tool and it's flaws. As Krug points out and many of us know:
- People don't read pages, they scan them
- We don't make the optimal choice, we make the best we know
- We don't figure out how things work through them
While this is second nature for many of us, the poor folks who don't understand the medium and believe a well crafted series of paragraphs will increase conversion need help. Don't get me wrong, messaging and branding are important but they are part of crafting a total user experience.