This book’s fitting subtitle is “a common sense approach to web usability“. Steve Krug has done a fine job of presenting his expert-level experience with making good websites better. The book is a very easy read that is chock full of useful information.

I have often visited a website or reviewed a proposal from a designer and get the feeling that the design is inadequate — but until I read this book I didn’t have the tools to identify and outline specific problems in web design. In the first few chapters the author describes a test for recognizing issues with areas such as: presentation, layout, navigation, search, and site identification.

One of the fundamental takeaways from this book is that your website should be a “Mensch” — a Yiddish term which roughly translates to “a stand-up guy”. Make things easy on your users. Don’t ask them to fill out information in forms until that information is absolutely needed. Make your website accessible to users with disabilities. The book follows it’s own advice and is written in a very friendly and down-to-earth language. It is illustrated with comical illustrations and great quotes throughout.

The last few chapters describe the benefits of conducting usability testing on your website. It calls for testing early and often, and it outlines a plan for doing it without destroying your budget.

Krug offers the book and hands-on training workshops at his company’s website, Advanced Common Sense. See for yourself, the entire text of Chapter 2 is available online. If you build websites by vocation or avocation, I highly recommend you do yourself a favor and get yourself a copy of this book.

P.S. BTW, in keeping with the spirit of this site (that is, growing a community of people sharing ideas for building better software) I’m not linking to this book with any sort of affiliate code, nor will I ever do this in the future. That’s just annoying.