Whether you're on a phone or a computer, pause for a moment. Take a close look at the order of the keys on the keyboard above (but make sure to come back here 😅).
The keys seem like they're in a random order, don't they?
Well, not only is the order anything but random, it's intentionally designed to make you type slower.
Wait, what?
The Story You've Probably Heard
Our computers (and later phones) inherited their keyboard configuration from old-school typewriters.
Nowadays, we simply press a key, some electronic magic happens, and we see the result on a glass screen.
The keyboard layout became known as QWERTY, named after the first six letters in the top-left row.
In typewriter days, the machine had to literally punch the page to leave its mark.
The faster you typed, the more likely the keyboard was to jam.
So the logic follows: if you slow down the typist, you decrease typewriter jams.
It's a story you'll find in books, newsletters, and videos by otherwise rigorous thinkers. I've come across it plenty of times myself.
Here's the thing: it's not true.
What Actually Happened
In 1868, Christopher Latham Sholes—a printer from Wisconsin—patented the first commercially viable typewriter. In 1874, Remington (yes, that Remington) licensed his design and brought it to market.
The keyboard layout became known as QWERTY, named after the first six letters in the top-left row.
It wasn't designed to slow anyone down.
Sholes didn't want his keyboards jamming, of course. If they did, he wouldn't sell any.
So like any good inventor, he listened to feedback from his users—telegraphers, early typists—and from his commercial partners.
The layout that emerged was a compromise of many factors that enable people to type at a reasonable clip.
It wasn't designed to slow anyone down.
Why QWERTY Won
In the 150 years since, plenty of keyboard alternatives have been proposed (most notably Dvorak and Colemak keyboards).
Some are arguably more efficient. Some are arguably faster.
But none of them matter.
The process that wins isn't always the most efficient. It's the one that becomes too sticky to quit.
Because by the time the alternatives arrived, QWERTY had already been taught to a generation of typists, built into a generation of machines, and baked into a generation of offices.
The costs of switching from QWERTY were too high.
So QWERTY won—not because it was the best, but because it became the standard before anyone else had a chance.
What This Means for Your Business
The gurus will tell you to obsess over efficiency. Optimize every process. Eliminate every bottleneck.
That's fine advice, as far as it goes.
The typewriter story is usually told to make a smaller point: that a little friction can be a feature, not a failure. Fair enough—that's true.
But the real typewriter story points at something bigger: the process that wins isn't always the most efficient. It's the one that becomes too sticky to quit.
Ask yourself:
- Is your onboarding process so smooth that clients can't imagine going back to the old way?
- Is your reporting rhythm so useful that it's part of how your client runs their business?
- Is your service so woven into their operations that switching would cost more than staying?
Sholes didn't build the best keyboard; he built the one that was impossible to quit.
When we build any website flow, success is measured by how sticky that flow becomes—not how optimized.
Stickiness is the moat.