Web Usability Tips

Web Usability Top 10 Tips

I have been developing website's for 6 years and previously survived 19 years in retail, sales and marketing (see my About Me page for more info.). During this time I have picked up a lot of hints and tips and practices (good and bad!), this website has grown organically over the last four years and does not represent the ideal application of all these tips!

Hopefully you will find some of these tips helpful, below are my current top 10 usability tips for small scale web development.

  1. Clear, reliable and consistent navigation, design the navigation before you build the site, navigation is there to achieve the website goals.
  2. User test your website, early in development and before launch. Use the information you gain from user testing to redevelop the site, don't ignore feedback unless you have a very good reason!
  3. Search is important, as your site grows, so does the importance of search.
  4. The web has developed standards, break them only if you can prove the benefits to your site. Headers, logos top left, footers, navigation columns to the left are consistent and expected.
  5. Usability is always improved by making your website Accessible.
  6. A web page is usually preferable to a PDF, avoid them wherever possible, convert the content into webpages instead.
  7. Users scan content, keep text short and meaningful.
  8. Allow users to control their web experience, allow text/font resizing and avoid overly fixed designs.
  9. Analysing your webstats will allow you to understand how users navigate your website, use this information to improve the experience and help achieve the website goals.
  10. Build for the user, not yourself, use dynamic content such as Flash and 3D only if the site requires it and you can prove the benefit (to the user).

Please feel free to comment on this top 10

I am not a Usability evangalist, more often than not some of the finer points such as User Testing will get dropped when pitted against deadlines, the desire to get on and code is often too compelling. However, I do believe that the longer you spend thinking about and looking at the issues of Usability in a website, then the better your website will be, and the less remedial work will be required later in the project.

Jakob Nielsen has developed a Top ten mistakes of website design, well worth a look!

As an amusing diversion though you might like to look at the Jakob Nielsen's (Usability Guru) take on Usability in the Movies -- Top 10 Bloopers

Resources

Usability.Com The Jakob Nielsen web Usability site.

Usabilitynews.Com Wide ranging news website based around Usability.

W3C Essay on Usability and Standards.

Usability.Net EU website for Usabilty, good resource but still being updated?

Usability news headlines, information and articles.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Google
 
Search This Photography Website Search the Web

View our New Amazon Associates website Store

All photographs on this website are ©Jeff Crowe Photographer, unless credited otherwise.

Try some more!!
Coming Soon...
Weights, Bytes and FStops


Web Master Contact Copyright Jeff Crowe 2007 all rights reserved
 Website Design