Jakob's law: your users want your site to work like the others

Your users spend almost all their time on sites other than yours. So they arrive with expectations already formed. Jakob's law says not to betray them without reason.

Stated by Jakob Nielsen, this law fits in one sentence: users prefer your site to work like all the other sites they already know. The logo top-left returns home, the cart is top-right, underlined coloured text is a link. These conventions are not limits, they are a shared language.

The principle

Every user arrives with a mental model built elsewhere, on hundreds of other interfaces. When your site respects that model, it is understood effortlessly. When it contradicts it, the user has to relearn, and relearning costs dearly in attention and patience.

Why conventions win

A convention is not a lack of imagination, it is a collective acquisition. Placing navigation where it is expected, naming things as elsewhere, responding to habitual gestures: all of this frees the user to focus on your content, not on how your interface works.

Reinventing navigation is not being bold. It is asking the user to relearn how to walk in your space.

Where to place originality

This does not condemn singularity, quite the opposite. The idea is to place originality where it adds value, the visual world, the tone, the content, and keep conventions where the user just wants things to work: navigation, forms, journeys. You surprise through the brand, not through the menu's location.

In practice

Respecting Jakob's law means reusing proven patterns for the mechanics, and reserving boldness for brand territory. That is what makes a site both immediately usable and clearly identifiable. A balance I seek systematically, because a brand's personality is not decided by where the cart sits.

Frequently asked questions

Doesn't respecting conventions make you generic?

No. Conventions concern mechanics, not identity. You keep the menu where expected, and express singularity through tone, visual world and content.

Can you innovate on the interface?

Yes, where innovation adds usage value. Innovating on the cart's location or navigation logic only slows the user down.

Where does this law come from?

From Jakob Nielsen, a usability figure. It formalizes an obvious point: users' expectations are built across the whole web, not on your site alone.

Florent DABERNAT · Art director and founder of IDSEED, based in Aix-en-Provence. I help my clients with branding, UX/UI and web, using a clear and documented method. Learn more ➞