Jakob's Law

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.

Over time, the web has established certain patterns to which we are all becoming accustomed. Deviating from these patterns risks making our app harder to use. Breaking user expectations means making them stop and learn. And people hate learning when they’re just trying to click a button.

For example,

  1. Usually, the navigation is on the top, left, or both sides
  2. The logo is in the left-top corner
  3. Search input may vary but usually on top, top-right side
  4. The right-top corner houses the shopping cart, account, login/logout, notifications, and other features.

The same happens in real life. If I ask you to imagine the appearance of a table, chair, keys, etc., you will likely come up with images that closely resemble these real-life objects. It's unlikely that a chair would have a triangular form, right?

From personal experience

When I work on a new feature — especially something a bit tricky — I always start by checking how others have solved it. Not everything has to be invented from scratch. Some things are obvious: logo goes top-left, nav bar goes on top or the side, search usually sticks to the top-right. We’ve all seen it a hundred times.

But once you get into more specific types of apps — like real estate platforms, SaaS dashboards, or booking systems — you run into patterns that aren’t as obvious unless you've built one before. How do they display property details? What filters do they show by default? Do they use cards or tables?

You don’t need to copy what others do blindly, but knowing the standard saves your users from having to re-learn what they already know from elsewhere.

That’s what Jakob’s Law is getting at — users expect things to work like they do elsewhere.

Key Takeaways
  • Most users spend their time on other sites — don’t fight their habits
  • Reinventing standard patterns is risky unless you really know what you're doing
  • Always check how others solve similar problems before inventing your own system
  • Innovation is fine — just don’t make users learn everything from scratch

Further reading

Jakob's Law
Definition by Jon Yablonski, the creator of laws of UX.
Jakob’s Law of the Internet User Experience
Explanation of the principle by its creator, Jakob Nielsen!
Unpacking Jacob’s Law: How to Use It to Improve Your Designs
Huge article by Elena Mitsiou.
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