#24578
Afraid So: Horrible Web Monstrosities
Here they come. Nightmare web sites that, from a usability perspective, are horrid monsters. When you're tired and in a hurry, you want a web site to quickly and easily provide relevant content to you, so you can solve a problem or perform some task. Discover common hideous impediments to web usability. WARNING: Not for the faint hearted!
Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#24524
Altruistic vs. Narcissistic Web Sites
Users are repulsed by web sites that are narcissistic, egotistic, corporate-speak, hard to understand, and difficult to use. Users are attracted to and enjoy web sites that are altruistic, user-prioritized, user-focused, easy to understand, easy to use, and full of fresh, relevant content.
Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#14191
Site visitors crave the sense that someone is there, within and behind your Web pages, your emails and newsletters. Dealing with the bare technology of online interactions is a cold experience for many, or even most of us. It makes us feel anxious. Technology isn't warm. It has no heart. It neither understands us, nor cares for us. For many Web sites, whether for businesses or organizations, we simply plug in and play the bare technology - the super-duper means of information delivery. All the site visitor sees and feels is the design, the interface, the links and the clicks. The experience is about as warm and human as banking with an ATM machine.
Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2002). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#20847
Designing for Real People: Additional Lessons for Web Design from Mall and Retail Design
Suggests lessons from bricks-and-mortar retailers that can be applied to web design.
Carliner, Saul. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#23120
Effects of Link Arrangement on Search Efficiency
The subjects that used the 155-link Web pages had a significantly faster search time using a three-column link arrangement, while the two-column link arrangement had the slowest search time. Results for the 30-link Web pages did not show a significant difference in search times for any specific link arrangement.
Dietrich, Jon, Karen Gordon and Marc Wexler. SHORE (1997). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#29551
Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Looks Like a Promotion = Ignored
One site did most things right, but still had a miserable 14% success rate for its most important task. The reason? Users ignored a key area because it resembled a promotion.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#29810
Five-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site's Content Pages
On your site, the content page is the user's most frequent final destination. This page contains the information the user came to the site to find. Sites often have hundreds, if not thousands (and in some cases, millions) of these critical pages. How can design teams be confident their content pages are understandable to users? How does a team ensure they've designed content pages that communicate the essential information effectively?
Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#21152
What do you really want your users to do once you get them to your site? What information do you want to get to them? How do you want to them to use your site? What responses do you want from your users?
Rhodes, John S. WebWord (1999). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#31912
Bad content, bad links, bad navigation, bad category pages... which is worst for business? In these examples, bad content takes the prize for costing the company the most money.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#21155
Everyone loves free stuff. Capitalize on this and you can make your site more user-centered. It can also drive up sales, profits, and user satisfaction.
Rhodes, John S. WebWord (1999). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#27942
Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First
Clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#27107
Helping Your Visitors: A State of Mind
Remember your site visitors won't find your website as easy to use as you do. Change your state of mind and you'll improve the user experience for all visitors.
Usborne, Nick. Webcredible (2006). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#27476
Research indicates that most users never find the majority of the functionality in any given application. Learning tends to reach a plateau early on, and is rarely expanded upon. And what that means is that most customers consistently undervalue the software products they purchase and use.
Farrell, Tom. Frontend Infocentre (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#19428
How Good are Designers at Predicting User Performance?
Having designers guess the best way of achieving optimal user performance is very difficult. Their design decisions can be improved by ensuring that designers are familiar with the research literature, and by effectively using performance-based usability testing.
Bailey, Robert. Web Usability (2001). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#31909
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
#21048
How to Make URLs User-Friendly
One of the worst elements of the web from a user interface standpoint is the URL. However, if they're short, logical, and self-correcting, URLs can be acceptably usable.
Baker, Adam. Merges.net (2001). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#19261
A Preliminary Report on Two Pilot Readability/Usability Studies 
Companies are beginning to conduct readability studies to determine how to provide customers with usable sites. Results have been inconclusive, conflicting, and often contradicting results of printed text studies. To discover how users use web sites, two pilot studies were designed to examine users, their purposes, and their reading processes. Many results parallel those of previous studies. In addition, new results indicate we need to examine several new variables, including amount of usage, site-specific knowledge, conventionalization, print bias, gender and age.
Boiarsky, Carolyn. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#31904
Reduce Bounce Rates: Fight for the Second Click
Different traffic sources imply different reasons for why visitors might immediately leave your site. Design to keep deep-link followers engaged through additional pageviews.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#20850
Web users need structure to make sense of the many and varied information spaces they navigate. The fundamental nature of the Web does not support any structure beyond the individual page which is the only recognized unit of information. For information spaces that cannot easily be hierarchically structured, the subsite can be used as a helpful additional structuring mechanism. Subsites can also be used in hierarchical information spaces to give particular prominence to a certain level of the hierarchy which is used as the subsite designator.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#20869
Tech-Support Tales: Internet Hard to Use for Novice Users
The Internet is still much too difficult to use for novice users. Specialized information appliances like WebTV reduce complexity but still involve considerable risk of user error.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#24111
Being sensitive to the fact that the user is in control, many sites simply present as many options as possible on their home pages. The thinking apparently being that the more choices you show on page one, the more likely you are to present something that connects with as many visitors as possible.
Usborne, Nick. ClickZ (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#21767
Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution
Better prioritization, fewer interruptions, and concentrated information that's easy to find and manage helps people become more productive and stop wasting their colleagues' time.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#24136
Three Ways To Find Out What Your Customers Want
The Web is interactive, whether you like it or not. And your customers are live participants in the marketing process, whether you like it or not. And as participants, they want something that most companies find hard to deliver. Your customers want you to listen. They want you to tune in and hear what is on their minds.
Usborne, Nick. ClickZ (2001). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#26499
With a small budget to create a website, many small businesses bypass usability testing. While it is not always possible to do a full-blown usability test on a small website, there are steps that website developers can take to help make sure users are not ignored during the process.
Weise Moeller, Elizabeth A. IEEE PCS (2005). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#28215
Since I've started developing websites I've been looking for the ideal layout. Today I got another hint on the direction to take. Jacob Nielsen calls it the 'F-Pattern.'
Information Architects Japan (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
