I never cease to be amazed at Jakob Nielsen’s conformist philosophy. Take these two passages from his newest Alertbox:
“It is much harder to say what good things to do since I have never seen a website that was truly stellar with respect to usability. “
(in a list of things that will “will increase the usability of virtually all sites)
“10. Do the same as everybody else: if most big websites do something in a certain way, then follow along since users will expect things to work the same on your site. Remember Jakob’s Law of the Web User Experience: users spend most of their time on other sites, so that’s where they form their expectations for how the Web works.
I take this to mean, “Even though no one is producing usable sites, imitate them anyway so users will know they have to go through the same suck ass experience as everywhere else on the web. For God’s sake don’t innovate! A little learning on the user’s part isn’t worth creating something better.”