Jakob's Law
Users spend most of their time on other websites. They expect your site to work the same way as sites they already know.
What is it?
Jakob's Law of Internet User Experience states: 'Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.' Coined by Jakob Nielsen (co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group), it is the most practically actionable principle in UX — follow conventions, and fight familiarity only when you have overwhelming evidence to justify it.
Why it matters
Every product your users touch before yours teaches them expectations. They expect the logo to be top-left, the shopping cart to be top-right, the search bar to be in the header, and the hamburger menu to reveal navigation. Violating these expectations creates friction, forces re-learning, and makes your product feel unreliable — even when it's technically superior.
Best Practices
- Logo goes top-left on desktop and is always a link to the homepage.
- Shopping cart icon goes top-right in e-commerce.
- Search is always in the header, prominently visible.
- Navigation is horizontal at the top on desktop, or hamburger/bottom bar on mobile.
- Footer contains: links, legal, contact. Users look there when they can't find something in the nav.
- Forms have submit buttons at the bottom, not the top.
- Save/confirm actions are primary and prominent; cancel/destructive actions are secondary.
- Underlined text is a link. Don't use underlines for decoration and don't remove them from links.
- Use established icon conventions: ⚙️ settings, 🔍 search, ✕ close, ← back, ≡ menu.
- When you must deviate from convention, make the unfamiliar gradually discoverable — don't just throw it at users.
Common Mistakes
- Moving the logo to the center "for aesthetic reasons" — users look top-left for home.
- Using novel navigation patterns (horizontal scroll, hidden nav) without sufficient onboarding.
- Removing underlines from links and using color alone — trains against convention.
- Using non-standard icons for standard actions — a diamond icon for settings requires learning.
- Hiding the search function — if search is primary, it needs to be always visible.
- Bottom-aligned global navigation on desktop — users don't look there.
Checklist
Research & Theory
Jakob's Law (Nielsen Norman Group)
Nielsen's observation after years of usability testing: users have internalized the conventions of widely-used websites. Violations consistently cause confusion.
Why it's relevant
This is the strongest argument for following conventions. Your product competes with users' entire prior experience of the web.
Transfer-Appropriate Processing
Memory and skill transfer between contexts that share similar patterns. The more your product matches familiar contexts, the faster users can apply existing skills.
Why it's relevant
Conventional designs benefit from users' prior learning. Novel designs force new learning from scratch.
Real-World Examples
Stripe
Logo top-left. Navigation top-right. Docs in nav. Search in header. Every convention followed, because violating them would add friction for developers who just want to get to the API docs.
Shopify Admin
Sidebar navigation where users expect it. Breadcrumbs at the top. Table actions in the top-right. Following conventions at scale reduces training costs.
GitHub
Tabs for repo sections (Code, Issues, PRs). Star in the top-right. Fork button next to it. Clone URL in the prominent position. The interface learned from developer expectations.