Craigslist: Simplicity Stuck in Time (2024)

I recently moved all the way to New York City from New Delhi to begin a master’s degree. After years of working, adjusting to student life in this city has been quite the transition. Conversations with people often revolve around savings and finding the best deals in the city — That’s how I learned about craigslist.org. I was amazed to hear of the kind of items for sale, often including rather bizarre ones, as well as the work opportunities one could find on Craigslist. I decided to check this mythical website out — and boom! I was transported back to the early 2000s.

I was bewildered that a website, which seemed so embedded in the cultural fabric of this city, was so old-school in design, yet still managed to remain so relevant today. Further research into the origins of the website revealed to me that its design has largely remained unchanged since its inception — no surprises there.

Craigslist was launched in 1995 and was a was a modern marvel at the time, bringing together all newspaper classifieds in one place on the web. As popular as it remains today, the website needs to evolve to stave off competition. To ensure its relevance, it must compete with other well-designed and high-functioning modern websites that offer personalized experiences to users on their platform (e.g., eBay — a direct competitor and the example I’ve used to compare web design features below).

As part of an assignment for my Information Architecture class at Pratt this semester, I chose Craigslist as the focus of this week’s design critique. The following design critique is informed by references and quotes extracted from the third chapter of Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, a book by Steve Krug based on his 25+ years of work experience as a usability consultant.

1. Create a Clear Visual Hierarchy

“One of the best ways to make a page easy to grasp in a hurry is to make sure that the appearance of the things on the page — all of the visual cues — clearly and accurately portray the relationships between the things on the page.”

The biggest flaw in the homepage’s information structure is the sensory overload caused by the sheer volume of categories and subcategories. This was perhaps my biggest issue as a modern user on the website — How do I find what I’m looking for without getting lost in the thousands of web links? To begin, it would be helpful to establish a visual hierarchy on the homepage, with the main categories listed higher up on the webpage and aligned in close proximity to each other and with sufficient breathing room around each other. The subcategories can be organized based on the selected content structure. The search bar, being crucial for navigating the website, should be positioned far more prominently.

2. Take Advantage of Conventions

“All conventions start life as somebody’s bright idea. If the idea works well enough, other sites imitate it and eventually enough people have seen it in enough places that it needs no explanation.”

If Craigslist were to implement Jakob’s Law and overhaul the design of its entire website tomorrow to make it more user-friendly, I imagine users would adapt to the new website in no time. This could be an easy and successful design strategy for Craigslist to adopt. As Steve Krug mentions in his book, “Sometimes time spent reinventing the wheel results in a revolutionary new rolling device. But sometimes it just amounts to time spent reinventing the wheel.” A simplified, familiar and seamless experience would likely attract more users who are accustomed to conventional web designs. E.g., the experience of searching a car for sale: The ease of browsing through the specific car-type that the user is searching for is absent on Craigslist — there is just one page for all automotive types, whereas eBay gives their users a category list to make it a relevant browsing experience by saving them time and effort.

3. Minimize Noise.

“When everything on the page is clamoring for my attention the effect can be overwhelming: Lots of invitations to buy! Lots of exclamation points and bright colors! A lot of shouting going on!”

If you’ve reached this point in the post, I imagine the screenshot of the Craigslist homepage might have popped into your head, just as it did mine when I read the lines above in Krug’s book. It was such an apt example. That’s exactly how I felt when I first accessed the website — a lot of shouting going on. An important advise I found in the book was, “When you’re designing Web pages, it’s probably a good idea to assume that everything is visual noise until proven otherwise.” This might be a wonderful way to direct the ‘busyness’ of Craigslist and simplify content, categories and how they are displayed, considering the massive volume of data on the website. Craigslist could enhance its website by incorporating more iconography to replace large blocks of text, which would help users process information more easily and make the experience more visually engaging.

A thoughtful redesign could help Craigslist offer a more intuitive experience while maintaining its cultural relevance for years to come.