Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

Take advantage of conventions Create effective visual hierarchies Break pages up into clearly defined areas Make it obvious what’s clickable Eliminate distractions Format content to support scanning

If you’re not going to use an existing Web convention, you need to be sure that what you’re replacing it with either (a) is so clear and self-explanatory that there’s no learning curve—so it’s as good as the convention, or (b) adds so much value that it’s worth a small learning curve.