I have taken a couple of weak-willed potshots at Jakob Nielsen, the original Web usability guy, not least in my free website-design ebook, Applying Lessons from Why We Buy. Most of my grumps relate to the dated nature of some of the guidelines in his books, Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed and Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity.
Now Mr. Nielsen is back with a new book, Prioritizing Web Usability, that updates the design guidelines of the earlier books — and I’m liking it. As an example, here are eight design flaws that still plague the Web, and prevent your customers (or viewers or readers) from using your website effectively:
- links that don’t change color when visited
- breaking the back button
- opening new browser windows
- pop-up windows
- design elements that look like advertisements
- violating web-wide conventions
- vaporous content and empty hype
- dense content and unscannable text
There is lots more — the book is hefty in both weight and content. Lots of screen shots to illustrate the concepts, too, and marginal notes to call out important points. Links to detailed research abound.
If you are involved in web design, you need to read Nielsen’s new book. If your business has a website, your web designer needs to read Nielsen’s book. If you don’t have a website, but are planning one, ask your web designer if he’s familiar with Nielsen’s work. If the answer is no, consider a different web designer. If the answer is yes, ask if he’s read Nielsen’s new book. Any web designer worth being paid should be up-to-date on Nielsen.
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I’ve been involved in website design, internet marketing and testing for awhile now and the number one mistake I see people make all the time is this:
They never know what the #1 dominant visual element is on their page.
On most websites the header graphic is the most dominant element, but unfortunately it doesn’t convey a lot of meaning to the visitor, they generally have to search for the title of the page and read the first paragraph before they know whether they’re in the right place or not.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents