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Simplicity: Krug-o-rama!
An interview with
Steve Krug, author of Don't
Make Me Think
Conducted via email by John S. Rhodes
(25-June-2001)
Money, Money, Money
Let's start with an easy question. Most companies want to make money. Tons of it! How can usability help drive up sales and profits?
I've never really spent time much time trying to convince people of this. For one thing, there are other people--like
Jakob Nielsen and Mark
Hurst, for instance--who enjoy making this case, and do it very well. Just do a Web search for
"items left in shopping carts" AND "umpteen billions of dollars"
and you'll find some very useful articles.
But it's always seemed to me that if you don't understand that it's important for people to be able to use whatever you're selling, you're probably unlikely to succeed. And personally, I like working with people who know what they're doing. Fortunately for me, all of the people who call me in to help already know the value of usability.
But I know that there are a lot of people out there stuck in political situations where they can't spend any time or money on usability without first proving to someone higher up in the food chain that it's going to produce a measurable return on investment, which has got to be very frustrating.
Some of these people have told me that they've made some headway just by leaving my book lying around for their boss to read. But I think the best thing you could do is to set up a morning of on-site usability tests (which just means dragging three people in and paying them $50-$100 each to spend an hour using your site while you watch and learn) and invite the decision makers to "drop by, if you have a few minutes."
In my experience, if you can get them to pop in for a quick look even CEOs and VPs will end up changing their plans and staying, since it's usually the first time they've seen someone actually using their product, and it's immediately clear to them just how invaluable this input is. After that, convincing them that usability is good business should be much easier.
Many internet businesses are dying. What is your best advice for companies that are sinking fast? Is this the same advice you would give to a profitable company?
For companies that are sinking fast, I suppose I'd suggest that they figure out what's wrong with their basic premise. I've been amazed in the last five years how often I've listened to a company's business model and said to myself, "Who would ever pay for that?" A lot of them just didn't make any sense. Of course, most companies in that position have already disappeared, or at least revamped their business model.
For companies that are profitable, I'd probably suggest that they focus on improving their conversion rate. Even on successful sites, there are almost always a few glaring problems that are either a) keeping people from concluding a purchase (if it's an e-commerce site), or b) sending them bouncing off your site before they've even had a chance to experience what you have to offer. These problems tend to show up right away if you just drag in a few people and watch them try to use the site. (As my corporate motto says, "It's not rocket surgery.")
Challenging the Idea of Simplicity
Don't users want rich content? Don't they want exciting colors, flashy animations, and really cool web applications? Why should a web site be simple?
The whole notion that users are dying for "rich content" has always struck me as a strange one. I think it's based on the idea that the Web is going to be TV when it grows up, and the only thing that's keeping it from growing up is a lack of bandwidth. For me, it's like saying that movies will be better when they're all holographic, or even that they got better when they made the transition from black and white to color.
When was the last time you heard someone say that they spent a few hours surfing the Web? Most of the time, we just want to get things done: buy airplane tickets, read movie reviews, or learn how to fix the leak in the shower. Personally, I tend to think that settling bar bets ("Name the seven dwarves") and answering nagging questions ("What's the part number for the glass shelf I just broke in my refrigerator?") are the real killer app of the Internet, and that we really haven't figured out how to do them well enough yet.
There are some specific kinds of rich content that work, like games, sports highlights, and movie trailers, for example. But good rich content is surprisingly hard to create, as anyone who's ever produced even a short film or video knows. And even though powerful tools like Flash make it much easier, our appetite for bouncing letters probably has its limits. And mediocre rich content, well.... Once the initial novelty wears off, it's pretty much the same as any other mediocre content.
Humans are basically smart and flexible, but if I understand your ideas correctly, you believe that web sites shouldn't make people think. That sort of seems counterintuitive. Can you tell me why people shouldn't need to think when they are using a web site?
I'd say rather that humans are incredibly smart and flexible.
My point isn't that they're incapable of figuring things out. It's that they're smart enough to know that it's usually not worth their time and effort to bother figuring things out. If a site's navigation is confusing, they generally won't try to figure it out; they'll just poke around and see if they can get to what they want. Poking around can work, and it can even be fun, but it's inefficient and it doesn't have a very high success rate. So if it's your site and it's important to you (economically or personally) that people find things there, it's incumbent on you to make it dead-easy for them to find them.
General Advice
Web sites lose people all of the time. They get lost, they get frustrated, and they leave if they are not satisfied. Gives us your help. What should designers and developers do to stop people from leaving?
For starters, don't try to stop them from leaving. The whole notion of adopting "stickiness" as a goal seems pretty misguided to me for most sites. It always makes me think of those posters from the sixties that said "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, then it's yours forever. If it doesn't, then it was never meant to be." (Or, as Mike
Myers put it in Wayne's World: "I say hurl. If you blow chunks and she comes back, she's yours….") I think users are smart enough to sense when you're trying to keep them corralled, and--by contrast--when you're confident enough in your site that you're not afraid to let them go.
The real way to keep people on your site is to a) have things that they want, whether it's products, information, or useful tools, and b) make sure that it's easy for them to get to these things and use them. And the only way to know that you're succeeding at a) and b) is by doing some testing.
Do you have any final comments? Any final bits of advice? What should every person remember about this interview?
I've said too much already. But I do have one timely--and very self-serving--tip:
From now until Tuesday (June 26th), Amazon is selling Don't Make Me Think at a whopping 40% off ($21) and they're offering free shipping if you buy two items. This is as cheap as it's going to get.
So if you're thinking of buying a copy for your boss--or if you are a boss and you're thinking of buying it for your whole Web team--now is the perfect time.
And if you feel like encouraging my behavior, you can earn me a few bucks if you
place your order via the Amazon Associates link on my Web site. I'd be extremely grateful.
Editor's Comments
First, I'd like to
say thanks to Steve for taking the time to work with me on this interview.
Second, I love Don't Make Me Think.
It is one of my favorite usability books and I strongly encourage you to get
a copy. You won't be disappointed. Trust me. Finally, I encourage you
to talk about this interview. I've started a discussion
on it. Check it out. If we are lucky, perhaps Steve will visit the
discussion and answer more questions. Share your thoughts with the Webword
community.
-- John S.
Rhodes
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