The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

Popularity is the product of two factors: (a) how compelling material you offer, and (b) how easy it is to access it. Host free pirated movies and users will flock to the site, even if it's difficult to use.

Throughout this book, we've been evangelizing simplicity, but ironically, the practice of simplicity is not simple. It is easy to build a bulky design by adding layer upon layer of navigation and features; it's much more difficult to create simple, graceful designs. Paring designs to essential elements while maintaining elegance and functionality requires courage and discipline.

The usability tests we have conducted during the last year have shown an increasing reluctance among users to accept innovations in Web design. The prevailing attitude is to request designs that are similar to everything else people see on the Web.

...pay attention to what users do, not what they say.

If your users have many questions, it's a failure of your primary site design. It becomes not so much customer support, as much as customer complaints.

The more users' expectations prove right, the more they will feel in control of the system and the more they will like it.