I learned a lot from Richard.  He was our web manager and whenever we had a design decision to make, he always applied one simple rule.  This rule made things better and more understandable. It always improved the user experience.

What was the rule?

It was: “Don’t Make Me Think!”

Let’s unpack that…

Don’t

This is a negative rule.  It’s all about killing bad behaviors in process, flow, and design.  It’s about stopping things that diminish your customer’s experience.

Make

A relationship never works well if one party is forcing the other to do something.  The relationship needs to be symmetric and frictionless.  Does your website make people do unpleasant and unnatural things to use it?

Me

Who is “Me?”  This is your customer talking, your user.  The basis of our decisions as digital marketers has to be about who we are serving.  It is not about making our life easier.  It’s about making the customer’s life easier!

Think

“Think” about what?  Well, anything!  The customer experience (CX) has to be intuitive and seamless. People must accomplish what they set out to do on our site… without thinking!  It takes a lot of work for a digital marketing team to design truly good experiences.  It is difficult and complex to make things simple, but your customers will thank you for going to the effort!

Practical Application

Here is a tangible example of what we did so our customers don’t have to think as hard when using our site: we stopped hiding things.

We got rid of tabs.  We consolidated multiple pages onto one.  We built a top mega-nav and put dozens of things on it.  These changes made the pages longer, but we mitigated that with jump-to’s above the fold. Overall, we made things flatter and more visible.  You can find what you need with less clicking and scrolling. Less thinking…

When we do site usability surveys with our customers guess what we find?  They love it!  They can quickly and easily find what they are looking for.  They don’t have to think…

The Rest of Life

How does this work with the rest of your life beyond digital marketing?  Well, how about email? When you send your boss a message about a problem is it a long, rambling exposition on life, the universe and everything? Something where the critical facts and the ask are really difficult to figure out? Something where your reader… really has to think?  Stop that! Write simply.  Use bullets and bold.  Read what you wrote as if you know nothing about it.  Does it make you… think?

So…

When you have a design choice or need to communicate something, put yourself in your customer’s shoes, evaluate how hard it is to understand you, and make choices that simplify and enhance their experience.  Remember: don’t make me think!