UX glossary · engl. Jakob’s Law
Jakob’s Law
Jakob’s Law states that people spend most of their time on other websites, so they expect yours to work the same way as the ones they already know.
Imagine you visit an online store for the first time. You look for the cart in the top right corner, but there’s nothing there. After a while, you spot it in the bottom left as a tiny box icon. By then, you’ve already bought elsewhere.
The store didn’t break anything. It just let down an expectation you bring from countless other stores.
Explained simply
Jakob’s Law goes back to usability expert Jakob Nielsen, who formulated it in 2000 as “Jakob’s Law of the Internet User Experience.” The core idea: people spend most of their time on other websites. That’s why they expect your website to work like the ones they already know.
Think of renting an unfamiliar car. You expect the brake pedal to sit to the left of the accelerator. A manufacturer that swapped them might be original, but also dangerous. On the web, the stakes are lower, but the principle is the same. Logo in the top left linking to the homepage, a magnifying glass for search, the cart in the top right: these conventions are learned patterns, and they support the mental model of the people using your site.
Convention or innovation?
Jakob’s Law doesn’t forbid anything new. In essence, Nielsen advises sticking with familiar patterns unless a departure is clearly better. Even a modest improvement may not pay off if people have to relearn things and the learning effort eats up the gain.
New patterns win when they offer a clear advantage or meet a new need. For entirely new interaction styles, Nielsen suggests watching what products converge on and then adopting those patterns quickly. This ties in with the “consistency and standards” heuristic from his 10 Usability Heuristics.
An example
Here’s an example: a sports club portal shows its navigation as a circular menu that only opens after clicking the club logo in the center. New members spend minutes looking for training times, and support requests pile up.
After the redesign, there’s a classic navigation bar at the top and a familiar hamburger menu on small screens. The circular menu is gone. The content is the same, but people find it right away because it’s where they expect it.
In practice
- Look at what your audience already knows. Check how the websites and apps your audience uses every day are structured, and build on their patterns.
- Only break conventions for a good reason. When you introduce a new pattern, run a round of usability testing to see whether it really works better than the familiar one.
- Give people time to adjust after a redesign. A preview or the option to switch back to the old version for a while takes the pressure off. You’ll find more principles like this in the Laws of UX resource.
Related terms
Mental Model, Heuristic Evaluation, Design System, Hamburger Menu