Desire lines

…You see desire lines in everyday life.…Look at the landscaping around a university campus,…or in the car park of a shopping mall.…If the landscaping happens to form a barrier between individuals and…their destination they'll jump over it or forge a way through it.…Soon the constant foot traffic wears a smooth trail.…These informal paths are known as desire lines.…The lines follow users perceived path of least…resistance between their current location and their desired goal.…The same effect is true online as well.…

The easiest way to get people to your desired outcome,…is to ensure it follows the path of least resistance.…Desire lines show us that path.…Here's a picture from the home page for freecreditreport.com from back in 2008.…If you look carefully, you'll see that they have an area on…the page devoted to telling people…about one of their competitors, annualcreditreport.com.…Why on earth would they do this?…It turns out they were forced to.…Their business practices involved collecting credit card…details as part of the sign-up process.…