Think of web surfers as Nicolas Cage and his crew, breezing through homepages looking for the exotic cars to steal — except instead of 60 seconds your homepage only has 30 seconds to catch their interest.

It’s estimated that users with low web experience spend just 35 seconds on a homepage, while savvy web users spend as little as 25 seconds.

With only 30 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention, your messages need to be lean and to the point. You can’t afford to take up space with long, puffed up paragraphs. Realistically, you have to make your point with approximately 20 words. As users spend their time trying to figure out where to go next, they’re certainly not reading your content word-for-word.

The four most important things your homepage must communicate to your visitors are:

• What site is the person on
• What benefits your site offers
• Information about your company, latest products, or developments
• How to get to the most relevant sections.

Keeping most of the organization of the Second Edition, the Third Edition addresses emerging web technologies and features such as:

• Tagging 
• Folksonomies
• Social Classification
• Guided Navigation.

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Using research gathered from general usability testing of 716 web sites and 2,163 users around the world, as well as more targeted testing of 69 users for purposes of creating the book itself, Nielsen condenses thousands of usability findings into a small number of key principles by emphasizing the ones that will have the most impact on your web site.

Some good points of discussion in the book include searching, prioritizing your usability problems, navigation, and writing for the web.

Must read chapter
If you don’t have time to read the book cover-to-cover, reading Chapter 3, “Revisiting Earlier Web Findings” is a must.

In this chapter, Nielsen lists 34 of the most prevalent usability issues and guidelines for addressing them. In addition each issue has a skull rating, indicating how important the problem continues to be.

Some issues that continue to cause web usability issues are:

• Links that don’t change colour when visited
• Breaking the back button
• Opening new browser windows.

This chapter is a great source for evaluating how well your site is doing in regards to its usability.

Who should read this book?
Prioritizing Web Usability is a must-read for both novice and seasoned web designers that develop news sites, e-commerce sites, corporate sites, non-profit sites, and government sites.

Prioritizing Web Usability
Authors: Jakob Nielsen, Hoa Loranger
ISBN: 0-321-35031-6
 

Maybe that question is a bit dramatic, but research shows that users view well-crafted short videos that take advantage of the medium’s dynamic nature — and by short I mean between 30 and 60 seconds.

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Morae Bundle is a usability software kit that enables you to record tests, observe users, and create presentations for your usability testing.

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She had a dude from 3M showing off their new Flag Highlighter and Pen. (In your best Seinfeld voice say, “It’s great because it’s a highlighter that holds flags!”)

Why am I talking about this?

Glad you asked. Oprah asks the 3M guy how they came up with the product. “Did someone tell you that they wanted this?”

The 3M guy responds, “No, we watched people use our products and thought this would be a great invention.”

3M was using a user-centered design process to create a product that people did not know they needed yet. Specifically, they conducted a task analysis.

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I was testing a page of products and services that users found easy to use. They became frustrated, however, when they clicked into the documents that explained these products and services.

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1. The participant asks questions during the task.
If the user is asking how to accomplish the task, reply “I’m not really sure. What do you think you should do?”

If the question is about the task itself — explain the task further.

2. The participant asks if they completed the task correctly.
Reply with “What do you think?” Remind the user that the purpose of the evaluation is not to judge what is right or wrong but rather to learn how participants use the web site.

3. The participant is stuck on a task.
Assure the participant that getting stuck is OK, as it highlights problems with the design.

4. The participant thinks they have done the “wrong” thing.
Assure the user that he or she cannot do anything “wrong” in a user evaluation. Remind the user that the goal is to learn how participants use the web site.

5. The participant completes the task correctly.
Simply ask the participant to move on to the next task. Do not say “Good,” “That’s correct,” or “Excellent,” as you are not testing the user but rather the web site.

6. The participant expresses frustration.
Find out what is causing the frustration — “What is frustrating you at this point in the task?”

7. The participant looks confused.
Again, explore the root of the confusion — “I can see that you are confused. What part of the task is causing the confusion?”

8. The participant does the wrong thing but thinks he or she completed the task correctly.
Simply continue with the test.

9. The participant gives you a design recommendation.
Acknowledge the recommendation and refocus the user’s attention on completing the task.

10. The participant gives up.
Assure the user that it is OK to give up, as he or she is helping find design flaws in the web site’s design.

Being out of your natural work environment while two people observe you is not really an easy position to be in. As a result, people react in different ways.

Here are the three types of user testers I came across this week:

The Designer
Instead of just using the page as they would on their own, “designers” want to redesign the interface. They usually have comments like:

• “It’s ok for me, but people with accessibility issues might have trouble”
• “It would be better if you move the button over here”
• “I think people with colour blindness might have problems with the colours.”

These suggestions might be useful if the participants were actual designers, but most times they’re not, so their suggestions probably will not help you.

To get “designers” back on track, acknowledge their ideas, but remind them that the purpose of the session is to understand how they are able to complete certain tasks.

The Thinker
Even after having the “think out loud” process explained to them, “thinkers” explore the page without so much as a grunt. These people drive your note-taker crazy, as there are limited notes to take.

Get “thinkers” talking by asking probing questions such as:

• “What are you looking for?”
• “What are you thinking?”
• “Can you talk me through what you just did?”

Mr/Ms. Negative
For these people, there is not one good element on the page. Even a web standard is up for ridicule.

Allow negative types to express themselves, but try to direct them to some positive features by asking “Is there anything about the page that you like?” 

The client’s user base is not very web-savvy. To compensate, my client decided to write instructions for a new online form. The form has a variety of features such as:

• check boxes
• radio buttons
• drop down menus, and
• action buttons (e.g. Submit and OK).

Determined not to use the word “click,” my client used the word “select” throughout the instructions. I know! Oh, the humanity!

“Select” is an acceptable word, but it is not the right one for every situation. Remember: users spend 95 percent of their time on other sites. Most other sites instruct users to “click” on a button, not to “select” a button. Users understand “selecting” a check box or an item from a drop down menu, but they will be confused by “selecting” a button.

More importantly, the W3C advice on not using “Click here” refers to links found in chunks of text. Since users scan information on your site, writing “Click here” for all your links does not help them decide where to go next. However, W3C did not intend for site owners to rid the word “click” from their vocabularies.

Learn two things from this short story:

1. Do not take “advice from the experts” to your peril
2. Use the right words for both your content and your link names, as doing so will help your users get the most out of your site.