Without hovering your mouse over my logo found in the header of this site, do you think it links to my home page? I’m certain that most of you think it will.

Predictable web design is knowing your users, and knowing how they expect your website to work. Here are a few important methods to make any site more predictable for its users.

Consistent Navigation

Visitors expect main menu items to link to pages that are consistent in format and application type as the other main menu items. Users are quickly irritated when finding a link within the main navigation menu of a website that leads to a PDF, or even worse, having a new window pop open to display another website.

I believe Jakob Nielsen coined the phrase “Hostile takeover of my PC”. Making your visitor open a new type of document like a PDF or even a new web browser window without first telling the user that the takeover will occur, is a hostile takeover. It’s unpredictable, it is inconsistent, and it’s not what the user expects.

Consistent Identification

One of my pet peeves in web design is the common lack of understanding in regards to heading tags. In addition to lack of understanding, they are also abused for SEO purposes, which is simply proof of lack of understanding. The reason it gets me so “peeved” is because it’s nearly one of the easiest ways to reveal to visitors your sites structure. See how to use heading tags.

It’s important to understand heading tags because they can help users understand your content value, and site hierarchy quickly. On this site for example, all my posts titles are the same size, their sub-headings are a bit smaller, and their sub-heading even smaller . It’s a clear and consistent method to show level of content importance. This is also a good reason to limit the use of bold within your text.

Consistent Focus

Consistent focus is another common oversight, but it’s an important one to remember, especially when considering accessibility issues. An example of inconsistent focus would be having a part of webpage change its content on a mouseover event.

Imagine trying to get a mouseover event to occur on a phone. Imagine trying to access that same data without a mouse or pointing device on your computer. These events occur more frequently than you may think, and that is why we need a reliable/consistent focus of site content for the user.

A complex site can still be easy to use if it’s consistent in navigation, identifying content, and focused on consistent content distribution.

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