Simplifying Website Usability: The 3 Step Approach

Some lovely clean and crisp designs, great post

Really liking todays type of design, lots of padding really makes you breath better when your looking at these sites

i love this collection, very inspiring.

I’m not sure 1,2,3 is the bit that makes it usable. It’s the fact that the process is explained upfront that is important. Each offering you design for will be different and so you need to do what works for each particular case.

I recommend that people steer clear of arbitrary rules like this. If you try to cut a 5 step explanation into 3 steps you just risk confusing people.

Great Roundup Lee,
Thanks..

Some great designs here, easy as 1 2 3

“Easy as 1,2,3″ was my philosophy for years now. Great article.

Thanks for not putting 100 pictures into one article anymore.

Yeah this is just a series of screenshots that happen to have “1,2,3″ in them. This list does nothing to explain the value of a simplified approach…

Interesting post, the UI for each of those sites is also amazing. Great compliment and easy to use.

Excellent examples. very inspirational. 3 IS the magic number after all.

Less is more. I love simplicity and it works well in all fields of design.

Good job.

you really worked hard to compile this list
thanks

I do have to agree with the fact that simplifying makes things easier, but you must take in consideration the context that you are designing, there are some time that a 1 to 5 or even 1 to 8 step approach is better than 1,2,3 approach. A better rule of thumb that any good user interface designer or web designer should apply is the DONT MAKE ME THINK!, a button shoould look like a button and a link should look like a link.

Thank you for inspiring designs, and for remembering us that simplicity is the father/mother of any good design.

Great stuff.

great article, the 3 step combined with good layout design…
and this is helpful for me

Great article and some really good examples. But I would like to see and a case study of a large web site – magazine, news portal, etc….it is really an form of art to keep things simple as 1,2,3 but what when You have tons and tons of content to tackle and for example squeeze to the front page?

I agree with David, while the designs featured here are awesome, it’s not about 1-2-3 its about explaining clearly what the service is about and having call to actions visible enough.

All designs are really great. Specially for “18. Get Me Fast ” because personally I know the designer very well.

Sweet!

combined usability with nice design,,,
Great post

“Simple as 123″ – I like this sentence! This will be the subject of my next WordPress theme and I’ll keep it as simple as I can.
Thank you for the great examples.

I have to agree with this. I was really confused when I read “The 3 Step Approach” and didn’t clearly see 3 Steps outlined or in bullet points. While the three steps are bolded, I had to read the text a few times before I understood that the bolded text was actually three different steps. In addition, I don’t feel like an actual approach was outlined, but rather that there is a lot of content missing from this “article”. To me, this isn’t an article, but rather a round-up of other sites. If there were only three or four sites with an explanation as to why each was chosen, there would be a lot more value in this post.

thx for collection.
post in favorites

Thanks for the comments.

Agreed, it’s not the 1,2,3 that makes a website usable, it’s about a clear process and clear call to action.

What I think works though is if your service down into 3 steps, especially for summing it up on the homepage, it makes things simple for the user to understand quickly.

So an online shop for example, instead of saying
1. Search for the product
2. Click on more detail
3. Enter qty
4. Click add to basket
5. Go to basket
6. Register
etc.

You could simplify it to 1. Find it, 2. Click it, 3. Buy it

My question is reagrding flash design. All we know that flash influence much load rate. Do you think that it can be combined with the site simplicity?

The 3 step approach is very useful when offering a product that is a service. It gives the user the idea that completing the task at hand is simple, quick, and easy. This way the user isn’t discouraged and has less of a chance of being a bounce statistic. Great examples here.

Great stuff.

Easy practice are always the best !!

Thanks for the remember

This is very effective. If you have to add cartoons and dumb it down, so much the better. Users won’t feel intimidated and they understand the 1-2-3

I liked twitter phone and CSS rockstar. Very nice websites and really helpful.

very useful information thanks a lot for this

I liked statement stacker.

Very innovative indeed.