#23769
Usability is often the most neglected aspect of Web sites, yet in many respects it is the most important. If visitors can't use your site, they will leave and never become customers. The Web gives people too much freedom and too many choices; no one will suffer a poorly designed site. To make your site usable, you need to involve potential customers in its design.
Nielsen, Jakob, Kara Pernice Coyne and Marie Tahir. PC Magazine (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability
#24405
Testimonials are obviously an extremely important part of any website - be sure to maximise their effectiveness.
Geld, Scott F. Webcredible (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability
#14886
Both Congress and the Bush administration have made more accessible Web sites a core mandate of e-government. The law known as Section 508 requires agencies to make information technology, including Web sites, accessible to people with disabilities. It forced many Webmasters to think seriously about Web design and usability for the first time. But talking about usability and making sure it happens are two different things. Usability means more than coming up with a good site design. It requires follow-through, and that's where many agencies — short-staffed and with little time or money for training — often come up short.
Robinson, Brian. Federal Computer Week (2002). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Section 508
#19410
Making Research-Based Design Decisions: Results of Research Poll
Usability information is being published in a variety of different locations. Most of it is still paper-based, and most current, full articles are not readily available on the Internet. This makes it very difficult for many (most) practitioners to use this information in a timely way.
Bailey, Robert. Web Usability (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability
#22402
Making Rich Web Application Architecture Usable
'Focus on the user and all else will follow' is a philosophy that can make or break a product. Software designers have become notorious for concentrating on implementation patterns and neglecting the user. It is easy to get lost in grand concepts at an abstract level and get excited over stuff that makes your work as a developer easier; thus, the needs and desires of the 'real' users may sometimes take a back seat. Identifying the usability constraints and designing within them keeps the focus on the user.
Gondi, Viswanath. SitePoint (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability
#22379
URLs that are easy to predict make it easier for users to type in a URL and link to pages.
Bohmann, Kristoffer. Bohmann Usability (2000). Design>Web Design>Usability
#19121
Making Web Advertisements Work
There are many reasons why advertisements don't work well on the Web, but it is most unsettling when an ad actually portrays something relevant to users and still fails. Why would this occur? Well, to start, we must consider why text ads work so well on search engines. Each user has a goal -- perhaps it is to learn about digital cameras, perhaps to purchase a book. In either case, users' attention is focused on whatever gets them to their goal; they ignore everything else. When users enter search queries, the targeted ads that the engine returns relate directly to what users are after. Hence, they look at and follow the ads. Indeed, such advertisements probably have an advantage over the plain search results because they show both that the advertiser is competent and has a direct interest in serving consumers.
Nielsen, Jakob and Donald A. Norman. Alertbox (2003). Design>Web Design>Marketing>Usability
#21138
The more time you spend at a site, the easier it is to use. Your investment in that site pays higher and higher dividends. Here's another metaphor. Your site and your users form a relationship.
Rhodes, John S. WebWord (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability
#20857
Some details less profound than disabled access, international usability, and site structure, but still important for Web usability.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Design>Web Design>Usability
#19031
You ask the Web jockeys to pull the latest stats. Hits are growing. Page turns per visit are up. The search button has been getting lots of action too. But before you pass those numbers on to the CEO, think again: The search button's popularity could be a sign that customers can't tell where the site's navigation buttons will take them. Those hits and page turns could be a sign that customers are lost, testing link after link. You don't know because at your company, as at most companies, no one has ever asked customers whether your Web site is easy to use. And what you don't know can cost you.
Kalin, Sari. CIO Magazine (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability>Log Analysis
#19023
Measuring User Motivation from Server Log Files 
Estimating user interest and motivation by just counting page requests from a World Wide Web server log (or 'hits') provides a distorted metric of user activity. Some of the reasons why this metric is unreliable are that the path dependent nature of hyperlink usability treats index and navigational aid pages as equal to the goal, because differenes in web browsers can determine how effectively users can percieve content and navigational alternatives, and because the poorly designed structure and content of the documents themselves can inhibit users from finding what they are looking for. This paper proposes that measures of how much time users spend looking at a page are better estimates of user interest than page hits, providing simple human factors principles have been applied. An extended example of how this method might be used to collect and analyze data is also included. The types of decisions that can be made by authors and system administrators based on a time-based metric of user interest is summarized.
Fuller, Rodney and Johannes J. de Graaff. Microsoft (1996). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Log Analysis
#27808
Million Dollar Web Usability Tips
What has long been a struggle for UEX professionals can actually be a great tool to demonstrate the importance of your role. We have found a way, using tools that you may already have, to support the users' needs that can positively impact your company’s bottom line.
Remus, Jacqueline and Jessyca Frederick. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Experience
#27864
Mobile and Handheld Usability Testing - Why It Matters
Mobile and handheld usability testing is crucial to your business - find out why and what you need to do for this unique medium.
Fidgeon, Tim. Webcredible (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability
#19305
Nokia are the world's leading maker of mobile phones. Their user-centred approach to developing products has been identified as one crucial factor behind this success. 'Nokia starts its planning from what the consumer actually wants while Ericsson and Motorola tend to be more engineering driven' commented Mark Davies Jones of Schroder Solomon Smith Barney. Anecdotal evidence and our own previous observations suggest that consumers find Nokia's mobile phones easier to use than many of their competitors and often take this into account - either consciously or sub-consciously - when making their purchasing decision. Frontend decided to evaluate the usability of a Nokia phone, the popular 3210, against a competitor, the older Siemens C25. We found that the Nokia is significantly easier to use in a number of areas.
Magennis, Mark. Frontend Infocentre (2001). Design>Usability>Wireless Web
#19425
No Web page fonts should be less than 10-points, Optimal reading speed for most adults will be elicited with 12-point fonts (size=3). There is probably no reliable difference in reading speed for most adults when viewing common font styles (Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Times New Roman). Most users tend to prefer sans serif fonts (Arial, Verdana). Older users will benefit from type sizes that are at least 14-points.
Bailey, Robert. Web Usability (2002). Design>Typography>Web Design>Usability
#27005
Users were having trouble learning about the Open University's special form of distance education on the existing site. To solve this problem, we wanted to make recommendations for the style and format of the information as part of our design.
Quesenbery, Whitney. UXmatters (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#21046
Custom error pages are better than stock error pages, and there are even better practical solutions that may eliminate the need for custom error pages to begin with.
Baker, Adam and Keith Instone. Merges.net (2001). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#28952
The Myth of the Genius Designer
Having a good designer doesn't eliminate the need for a systematic usability process. Risk reduction and quality improvement both require user testing and other usability methods.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Testing
#29664
Name and Address Forms on the Web: Research into Usability 
Internet forms can be found on all kinds of sites that enable visitors to interact with companies, such as order forms in online shops or application forms on job boards. These forms ask visitors to fill out their name and address, which in many cases results in user errors as a consequence of design failures. In this article we report on a research project using event logs to analyze user errors and optimize the design of name and address forms. Two factors are identified as crucial for usability: the sequence of elements in the name field and the spatial orientation in the address field.
Lentz, Leo and Menno D.T. de Jong. STC Proceedings (2005). Design>Web Design>Forms>Usability
#22373
Navbars: Why Drill-Down Menus are Harmful
Drill-down menus make interaction more difficult, destroy the user's overview, and poor wording make users give up using the site.
Bohmann, Kristoffer. Bohmann Usability (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability>DHTML
#18661
The artless Websites created during the Web's infancy were of necessity built only with simple HTML tags, and were forced to divide up their functionality and content into a maze (a web?) of separate pages. This made a navigation scheme an unavoidable component of any Website design, and of course, a clear, visually arresting navigation scheme was better than an obscure or hidden one. But many Web designers have incorrectly deduced from this that users want navigation schemes. Actually, they'd be happy if there were no navigation at all.
Cooper, Alan. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#19619
Navigation: An Often Neglected Component of Web Authorship
Web authors should follow web design conventions that account for the variety of ways users will try to navigate through their pages. While usability testing is the best way to ensure your site is really operating as you intend it to, this page offers a basic overview of basic navigation principles that most visitors will expect on most pages that they visit.
Jerz, Dennis G. Seton Hill University (2000). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#20865
Every Web usability study I have conducted since 1994 has shown the same thing: users beg us to speed up page downloads. In the beginning, my reaction was along the lines of 'let's just give them better design and they will behappy to wait for it.' I have since become a reformed sinner since even my skull is not thick enough to withstand consistent user pleas year after year.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Design>Web Design>Usability>Bandwidth
#14624
The author offers advice on choosing the most appropriate search engine, as well as a list of tips for using search engines.
Archee, Raymond K. Intercom (2000). Design>Web Design>Usability>Search
#19015
Jakob Nielsens hypotese må enten være baseret på hypertekst som et teoretisk felt, eller i relation til HTML. Dette bliver der ikke taget stilling til fra Nielsens side, så umiddelbart må det ses som en personlig vurdering af Nielsen. Man kunne lige så godt sige at computere eller http protokollen var vigtigst. At links er vigtige for navigationen i et hypertekst dokument er der ingen tvivl om. Hvis der ikke forekom links i en hypertekst ville det blive overordentligt svært at forestille sig Internet som det ser ud i dag.
Quark, The (2002). (Danish) Design>Web Design>Theory>Usability
