Jakob’s Law

Jakob’s Law is a UX design principle which says that users spend most of their time on websites other than yours. As a result, they have formed a firm idea of how a website should work, and they automatically apply the same idea to yours. With my clients, I call this the industry standard, and I often point to Alza or Shoptet websites, which are exactly that industry standard in the Czech Republic.
When your website follows established conventions, people find their way around straight away. When you invent your own unusual solution, you force them to learn from scratch, and that costs them energy they are usually not willing to spend. It is especially unwise to experiment too much in the basket (unless you measure things or run A/B tests). In practice, this means just one thing: originality in a website’s basic usability almost never pays off.

Classification

• Cause (Cognitive Bias Codex): Not enough meaning
• Mental area: Perception and UX
• Marketing function: UX and website usability
• Buyer journey: across all stages (navigating the website)
• Cialdini’s principles: not applicable
• System 1 / System 2: System 1 (fast, automatic)

In a nutshell

• What it is: users expect your website to work like the others they know.
• Why we do it: the brain saves energy and transfers patterns learnt on other websites.
• Where you will see it: the placement of the menu, basket, search, buttons and page layout.
• How to use it: stick to conventions where usability is at stake, and stand out through your content and brand.

A real-life story

The law was named by Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group and one of the leading authorities on website usability. He formulated it in 2000, and since then it has become one of the fundamental rules of UX design. Its point is subtle but crucial: users do not know only your website, they know thousands of them, and they bring expectations from all of them.

Imagine Tereza arriving at an online shop where the basket sits in the bottom left instead of the top right, and the search is hidden under an icon she has never seen before. It is not that she could not manage. It is that it slows her down and makes her unsure, and rather than think about it, she leaves for a website that behaves “normally”. Convention here is not a lack of imagination but respect for how people actually use websites.

How Jakob’s Law works

The brain does not want to start from scratch on every website. So it transfers the mental model it has built on dozens of other sites and assumes it will apply here too. When a website meets this model, users move around intuitively and almost without thinking. When it breaks it, unnecessary cognitive load arises, and with it frustration. The principle is close to the mere exposure effect, because what we know feels more pleasant to us, and to the availability heuristic, because we follow a pattern that comes to mind easily.

Use in marketing and on websites

1. Stick to conventions in navigation. The logo in the top left links to the homepage, the basket goes in the top right, and the menu sits where people expect it. Here, originality does harm.
2. Do not make your redesign radical. When redesigning, do not change everything at once. An abrupt change clashes with users’ learnt habits and knocks down conversions in the short term.
3. Stand out through content and brand. Be unique in what you say and how you look, not in where the buy button is hiding.
4. Copy patterns from the big players. An online shop layout borrowed from established players is not laziness, but making use of what people are used to.
5. Test, do not guess. If you really want an unusual solution, verify it with real users. A UX audit also serves this purpose.

How to work with it

1. Ask where the convention lies. For basic usability, ask “how do most websites do it?”, not “how can I do it differently?”.
2. Separate form from content. A conventional framework, original substance.
3. Make changes gradually. Give users time to get used to them.

How it connects with other cognitive biases

Jakob’s Law is essentially the UX version of the mere exposure effect. People prefer and trust what they know from other websites. If you also reduce the number of options in line with the paradox of choice and add a sensible default option, you create a website people can move around without thinking. That is exactly the goal of good UX and of stronger SEO performance, because satisfied users stay on the website longer and come back.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jakob’s Law?

A UX design principle which says that users expect your website to work the same way as other websites they know, because they have formed firm habits on them.

Who formulated Jakob’s Law?

Jakob Nielsen of Nielsen Norman Group, one of the leading authorities on website usability, in 2000.

Does this mean a website should not be original?

No. Stand out through your content, brand and visuals, but keep basic usability and navigation in line with the conventions people are used to.

Patrik Pilous

I am a marketing strategist and SEO consultant. I love the world of marketing, the internet and AI. I am at my best when planning business growth, setting and executing marketing strategy and optimising websites (SEO, GEO and, above all, sales).