Jakob's Law
Users spend most of their time on other sites. They prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
Read the original on lawsofux.com →
The scenario: a product page on Inkwell Books, an online bookshop. Shoppers arrive with years of Amazon-shaped muscle memory: logo top-left, search in the middle, cart top-right, a big “Add to cart” button next to the price. The “before” breaks every one of those expectations in the name of originality.
The Silent Harbour
★★★★☆
€18.90
✓ In stock — ships tomorrow
🔍 What changed
- Logo moved to the top-left and made a link home — where a decade of web use has taught people it lives.
- Search is a visible labeled bar in the header center, not an unlabeled icon on the edge.
- “My Satchel 🎒” became a standard cart icon with an item count, top-right.
- Price sits next to the title, followed by stock info and a prominent “Add to cart” button — instead of a grey text link and a below-the-fold price.
- Breadcrumbs added so shoppers always know where they are in the catalog.
💼 Explaining it to stakeholders
“Our customers arrive trained by every other shop they use — that training is a free asset, and the ‘creative’ layout throws it away. Every convention we break becomes a small puzzle standing between the shopper and the purchase, and each puzzle costs us a percentage of them. Being conventional in navigation and checkout isn't being boring; it's what lets our actual differentiators — the books, the prices, the service — get all the attention.”