Homepage Real Estate Allocation

On average, sample sites evenly distributed valuable screen space between content, navigation, fluff, blank areas, and system overhead. Areas of user interest should occupy more than the current 39%.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

How Big is the Difference Between Websites?

The average difference in measured usability between competing websites is 68%. This is smaller than expected, but makes sense given the dynamics of design within individual industries.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>Web Design

How Little Do Users Read?

On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design

How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic evaluation is a usability engineering method for finding the usability problems in a user interface design so that they can be attended to as part of an iterative design process. Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the 'heuristics').

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1994). Articles>Usability>Methods>Heuristic Evaluation

Ideas for Improved Within-Page Navigation

WebTV is the first Web user interface for which I have discovered a serious need for navigational aids within the page.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Design>Web Design>Usability>Web Browsers

Improving Usability Guideline Compliance

Over the last 1.5 years, the average compliance with established usability guidelines increased by 4%. If we can sustain this level of improvement, we'll reach the ideal of 90% guideline compliance in 2017.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>Usability

In Defense of Print

The reduced reading speed on computers can be compensated by good hypertext design that allows the user to read less information and to find it faster. A typical example is online help and documentation: because the information is right there on the computer, there is no need to spend time finding the hardcopy manual, and because of good search tools and hypertext links between related information, users can go directly to the one or two sections that contain the answer to their problem. After all, Nielsen's first law of computer documentation is that users don't read it. The second law is that if they read it anyway, it's because they are in deep trouble and need the answer to a specific problem. Thus, somebody reading a manual won't really read it cover-to-cover, so online presentation makes perfect sense.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Articles>Documentation>Online>Usability

In the Future, We'll All Be Harry Potter

The world of magic is a world where inanimate objects come alive; it's as if they had computational power, sensors, awareness, and connectivity.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>Usability>Interactive

Incompetent Email Marketing = Lost Future Opportunities

Lack of personalization made an email newsletter completely useless to the recipient, damaging long-term customer relationship efforts.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Marketing

Incompetent Email Marketing = Lost Future Opportunities

Lack of personalization made an email newsletter completely useless to the recipient, damaging long-term customer relationship efforts.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Email>Marketing

Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster

The easier it is to find places with good information, the less time users will spend visiting any individual website. This is one of many conclusions that follow from analyzing how people optimize their behavior in online information systems.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Search

Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster

The easier it is to find places with good information, the less time users will spend visiting any individual website. This is one of many conclusions that follow from analyzing how people optimize their behavior in online information systems.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Search

Information Pollution

Excessive word count and worthless details are making it harder for people to extract useful information. The more you say, the more people tune out your message.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Design>Web Design>Writing

Information Retrieval of Imperfectly Recognized Handwriting

A user test of handwritten input on a pen machine achieved a 1.6% recognition error rate at the character level, corresponding to 8.8% errors on the word level. Input speed was 10 words per minute. In spite of the recognition errors, information retrieval of the handwritten notes was almost as good as retrieval of perfect text.

Nielsen, Jakob, Victoria L. Phillips and Susan T. Dumais. Alertbox (1993). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>User Interface

Informational Articles Must Ask For the Order

Unless you have explicit links to product pages from article content, users who visit articles directly from search engines might never realize that you sell related products.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design

Instructions for Branch Office Testing

These are the instructions we gave to the people at various Sun branch offices in Europe and Asia for their user testing of a new design for the company's web pages. In a few places, these instructions refer to web-specific issues, so they will have to be modified slightly for use in other projects. These instructions were sent by electronic mail to those local Sun reps who had volunteered to lead a test.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Articles>Usability>Methods>Testing

International Sites: Minimum Requirements

Users from other countries have special needs related to entry fields for names and addresses, measurements and dates, and information about regional product standards.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Web Design>International>Usability

International Usability Testing

Although products are commonly used in countries other than the one they were designed for, designers often forget to consider different usage circumstances. International use of the Web is particularly common since users can access pages from all over the world with a single click.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Articles>Usability>Methods>International

International Web Usability

They don't call it the World Wide Web for nothing. A single click can take you to a site on another continent and a business can attract customers from hundreds of countries without ever going to a Frankfurt trade show where they book you into a hotel two hours down the autobahn.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Design>Web Design>International>Localization

Intranet Portals: A Tool Metaphor for Corporate Information

Internet portals are virtually dead, but a portal approach can tame the unruly chaos on internal company networks. Intranet portals overcome many Internet portal limitations, and might be the best hope for productivity and a unified user experience.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Design>Web Design>Journalism

Intranet Usability Shows Huge Advances

Measured usability improved by 44% compared to our last large-scale intranet study. The new research identified 5 times the previous number of intranet design guidelines.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Usability>Intranets

Intranet Usability: The Trillion-Dollar Question

The average mid-sized company could gain $5 million per year in employee productivity by improving its intranet design to the top quartile level of a cross-company intranet usability study. The return on investment? One thousand percent or more.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Articles>Usability>Intranets

Intranets Save Time--But for Whom?  

The world economy will lose roughly $100 billion because of bad intranet usability. Why is this? The intranet, as the corporate information infrastructure is called, is supposed to dramatically enhance employee productivity. That's the party line, but it's not the reality. The reality is that most intranets are a mess. Employees waste inordinate amounts of time trying to find answers to their problems, and most companies have no active programs in place to improve their intranets or make them into productivity tools. Intranets often suffer from the worst mistakes of Website design while having only a fraction of the budget allocated to marketing-oriented Websites.

Nielsen, Jakob. Business 2.0 (2001). Design>Usability>Intranets

Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace

This succinct introduction is an example of the inverted pyramid style: starting with the conclusion. If I wanted to write a column about frames I would continue with one or two examples of why frames suck (can't bookmark or print a view) and conclude with a discussion of the fundamental issues (frames impair the user's navigation and break the fundamental user model of the Web as being composed of unitary pages).

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Investor Relations Website Design

Investor relations (IR) is one of the 'Big Four' standard components of a corporate website (along with public relations, employment, and 'About Us'). In the modern world, investors assume that they can go to www.company.com to research a current or potential investment. While companies must provide IR information to attract and retain investors, they must also be realistic about the types of content and features that users need most. Simplicity and a coherent story about the company are better than drowning users in incomprehensible data.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability