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"Don't Make Me Think"
Book Review
by John Burshek, Principal,
Reflection Point Research LLC
If you’ve ever wondered what
the heck website usability
is, what it looks like in real life, and why it’s extremely
applicable to credit union websites, then you must get this
book!
Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug, sells itself
to the website usability world as being for everyone from
beginning usability specialists to experienced veterans of
website usability and design. However, the fact that it has
been a consistent top seller through Amazon.com speaks to
the timeliness and breadth of its message to the buying
audience.
While you’re not going to find
anything directly related to credit union websites or even
financial institution websites (almost all examples are of
consumer product websites), the principles laid out clearly
by Mr. Krug in
Don’t Make Me Think are worthwhile for any
website. In our opinion, understanding what the person
sitting across the screen from your website is seeing and
responding to on sites more trafficked than typical credit
union websites is invaluable to understanding the playing
field that your site has to perform on.
Too often we hear how the
playing field has become level because of the Internet,
however, what we see is exactly the opposite. The playing
field is now available for all to see and compare
impressions and impact from websites where $100 million have
been spent on design, content and navigation to websites
where $500 have been spent. This is anything but an even
playing field and you need to know what really works and
why.
Don’t Make Me Think does just that in simply,
easily understood language. What’s even more impressive are
the copious colorful graphic examples of major points made
by Mr. Krug. Perhaps the most impressive part of this book
is Mr. Krug taking existing websites and showing a complete
redesign that emphasizes his major principles. A picture is
really worth a thousand words in this case, since when you
see the redesigned website come to life in the pages of the
book, you can hear yourself and other readers going, “Ohhhh,
now that makes a lot of sense.”
But, as has been said many
times, common sense is really neither. We highly recommend
this book to not only the IT professionals within the credit
union movement, but also to those in charge of
marketing and branding for credit unions. Credit union
marketing executives will find this a very interesting read
and hopefully spur some creative ideas on how to put more
meaningful punch into their credit union’s website.
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