Review of "Don’t make me think (Revisited): A common sense approach to web usability."

I’ve recently read through the book “Don’t make me think (Revisited): A common sense approach to web usability,” and I have to say it really opened up my eyes to the world of being a “user friendly” web operator. In saying this I mean that there is so much more that should go into creating and maintaining a successful website. For example, I created this blog for the Advanced Interactive course that I am currently enrolled in at the University of Florida. However, in making this blog I didn’t put much thought into what you as the reader would get out of it (sorry!). I honestly just assumed that if I posted things and made them witty and easy to read then people would read my posts and that would be the end of that. But this book challenges you to dig deeper. On the internet there are a million different things competing for your attention. In personally know that even when logging on the web with one specific task in mind, within seconds I have at least four to five other tabs open on my browser window. As I write this post right now I have a tab open for Facebook, Pandora, Essence Magazine, Elearning, and BuzzFeed. That’s insane when you think about it! I say all of this to say that as an online consumer it takes something more than “catchiness” or “quirkiness” to grab and hold one’s attention. When I look at all of these things that I have open, more than half of them where due to links that I found on Facebook and ended up clicking on. And that’s just it, it’s the ease with which I was able to get to another site that made it so enticing to click. If I knew in order to get to that funny BuzzFeed post I’d have to jump through a million hoops and give a pint of blood, then I would have never clicked on it. And it’s with this mindset that we as web operators should be creating and managing our website. Chapter four of the book, “Don’t make me think (Revisited): A common sense approach to web usability,” really does a great job of explaining this concept. Essentially it says that people on the Internet don’t want to have to think too much to do anything (harsh right?). But when you think about it it’s true! If there are two things competing for your attention on the internet, both equally “important” to you, but one is easier to get to, which one are you going to go for first and probably stick with longer? The easy one, duh! So in sum there are few important tips that any blogger, website manager/owner, etc. should employ based on this book. For one, don’t give users too many hard and lengthy choices to make in order to get to you content. Just don’t do it. And two, if you keep your site full of brief, timely, unavoidable, and (my own addition) easy to access, you’ll probably have more eyes looking at your content for longer.