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Often, the difference lies in how well the design fits the way people notice information, make choices and complete tasks.
UX laws and principles offer useful ways to examine those moments. They draw on psychology, human behaviour and usability research. They can help you improve a website, but they are not instructions to follow blindly. Your visitors, their goals and the context still matter most.
Here are six principles worth understanding, with practical examples for business websites.
What are UX laws and principles?
UX laws describe patterns in how people perceive, decide and interact. UX principles turn those insights into guidance for design. Together, they can help answer questions such as: Is this choice easy to understand? Can someone find the next step? Does the page behave as expected?
They are especially useful when reviewing navigation, service pages, landing pages and enquiry forms. The goal is to remove avoidable effort while preserving what makes your business distinct.
1. Jakob’s law: Work with familiar expectations
People spend most of their time on websites other than yours. As a result, they bring expectations about where to find navigation, how links behave and what happens when they click a button. This idea is known as Jakob’s law. NN/G
Website example: A visitor expects your logo to link to the homepage and your main navigation to make important pages easy to find. If your menu uses unfamiliar labels or hides essential services behind an unexpected interaction, visitors must first learn the interface.
How to apply it: Use familiar patterns for important tasks. Put originality into your brand, message and content, while keeping essential interactions easy to recognise. If you introduce an unusual interaction, test whether visitors understand it.
2. Hick’s law: Make choices easier to process
Hick’s law comes from research on choice reaction time. In simple tasks, deciding between more possible responses tends to take longer. A website decision is more complex than a laboratory task, so the lesson is not “always show fewer options”. The useful question is whether people can tell the options apart and choose confidently. W. E. Hick, 1952
Website example: Six service cards use similar names and almost identical descriptions. A visitor struggles to know which one addresses their problem.
How to apply it: Group related services, write meaningful distinctions and offer guidance such as “Best for websites with high traffic but few enquiries.” Remove redundant options where appropriate, but keep the information people need to make a sound decision.
3. Fitts’s law: Make important actions easy to reach
Fitts’s law relates the time needed to reach a target to its size and distance. For websites, this is a reminder that small, tightly packed links and buttons can be harder to select, especially on touchscreens. NN/G
Website example: A mobile enquiry form places tiny radio buttons close together. Someone trying to select “Website audit” repeatedly taps the wrong option.
How to apply it: Give interactive elements a generous clickable area and enough space from neighbouring controls. Place actions where they make sense in the flow of the task. A larger button cannot fix an unclear label, so check both its physical usability and its wording.
4. The proximity principle: Show what belongs together
People tend to perceive nearby elements as related. This is the Gestalt principle of proximity. Spacing therefore communicates structure, even before someone reads the words. NN/G
Website example: A service card’s button sits closer to the next card than to its own description. A visitor may be unsure which service the button refers to.
How to apply it: Keep headings, descriptions, evidence and actions for the same topic together. Use more space between distinct groups. In forms, place labels, help text and error messages near the fields they explain.
5. Recognition over recall: Keep useful information visible
People generally find it easier to recognise an option when they can see it than to remember it without a prompt. On a website, visitors should not have to carry details from one page or step to the next. NN/G
Website example: A three-step enquiry form asks someone to choose a service, then removes that choice from view. By the final step, they cannot easily check what they selected.
How to apply it: Use clear labels, visible selections and a review step when appropriate. Make important terms or prices easy to revisit. If visitors need information from an earlier step, show it again or provide an easy way back.
6. Visibility of system status: Show what happened
When people take an action, the website should tell them what changed. This is one of Jakob Nielsen’s usability heuristics. Feedback is especially important for actions involving waiting, payment or personal information. NN/G
Website example: Someone presses “Send enquiry”. Nothing appears to happen, so they press it again and wonder whether their message arrived.
How to apply it: Show a clear loading state, prevent accidental duplicate submissions and provide a useful confirmation. Tell visitors what happens next, such as when they can expect a reply.
How do these principles work together?
Imagine a business website with a service page that attracts visitors but generates few enquiries. A review might reveal several connected issues:
- The menu uses unfamiliar labels, making the service hard to find.
- Similar service options make it difficult to choose.
- The main button is small on mobile.
- The button sits far from the explanation that gives it meaning.
- The enquiry form hides the selected service.
- Submitting the form produces no clear confirmation.
No single law explains the whole problem. Together, the principles help you identify where the journey asks visitors to guess, remember or work harder than necessary.
Use the principles as questions, then test with people
A principle can point you toward a possible improvement. It cannot tell you why a particular visitor left your website or guarantee that a redesign will increase conversions.
Start with an important task. Ask someone from your audience to find a service, compare options or send an enquiry. Observe where they hesitate, backtrack or misunderstand. Then make a focused change and check whether it helps them complete the task with greater clarity.
Analytics can show where a journey breaks down. User research helps explain what happened. Both are more useful when you begin with a specific question rather than applying a law for its own sake.
