Usability Archives

Carsten Cumbrowski has written a nice piece at Search Engine Journal about the 50 questions that you should ask to evaluate the quality of your website. He groups the questions into categories from Accessibility to Design to Security and even Legal questions. A sampling of questions:

Security: How resilient are forms to special characters? Accessibility: How compliant is the website with W3C coding standards? Valid HTML/CSS? Navigation: Call to action on every page, no dead ends

These are great questions and this is a checklist that should not be ignored when designing a website (and then performing QA on it afterwards).

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Stoney DeGeyter has written over at Search Engine Guide that not every client needs SEO. Sometimes the usability needs to be tackled first. Using an analogy, he explains that your website is like a restaurant. If the restaurant isn't accessible, people might not hang around. He drives the point home with:

By fixing usability issues you can sell more while without having to spend a lot of money always trying to bring in a lot of new traffic. A little goes a long way. Once you are able to increase your conversion rates, every dollar you spend on marketing and SEO will be more effective and have a much bigger impact on your profit margins.

This is important because not everyone is ready to embrace a search engine marketing campaign if they're not able to make their website more usable. This is true for PPC as well, as echoed on Sphinn:

Excellent point! I see the same problem (maybe even more of a problem) with those looking to do PPC. Companies want to advertise via Adwords but have a site that clearly will not work in paid search.

So here's the suggestion as proposed by Search Engine Guide: make a usable website first, and then focus on search marketing.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Kim Krause Berg started a rant on her blog about how the Sphinn community was not welcoming of usability experts. Her rant became a hot topic on Sphinn and it prompted Danny to create a Usability category. Kim brought the discussion to Cre8asite Forums asking if her rant went too far.

It was unanimous; everyone felt that it did not.

In fact, what about search conferences? Everyone agreed that Usability is something that should be integrated into the agenda for future search conferences.

I think we're really seeing something different: SEO is encompassing so many different terms and ideas, and usability should be part of it.

There have been plenty of times, when SEOs have been thinking that some other angle should be considered SEO or not. I recall the same talk about copywriting, marketing, hand-coding, link baiting and now it is about usability.

As EGOL says, "Usability is the big part of the New SEO."

However, Ammon Johns disagrees. He feels that Usability is not part of the new SEO per se, but it's definitely been something that was there for awhile.

It is part of old-school marketing. We call it making a smooth presentation.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

An interesting Cre8asite Forums thread talks about an old topic on determining user intent based on search results, and then serving up a customize page to that user, based on his or her intent.

G-Man asks, without "search engine data" but with scraped results, can you still deploy this tactic of customizing based on user intent?

Ammon Johns believes you can. Just like you would with your own search referral data, you can use the scraped results to determine user intent. Ammon explains, "It is perfectly possible to determine a lot about intent, and motive, from a user by the method they use, either in keywords, or even by other referral data. It is simply about context and empathy at heart."

Classifying the types of keyword phrases into buckets of user types. User types might include ready to buy, just browsing, looking for best price, looking for best customer service, and so on. When you determine your users, typically through user personification, you can then associate keyword types to each persona. Then you direct each landing page to each persona based on the keyword search.

The thread goes into this in more detail.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

It may appear unimportant to care about where to put an "*" or text word "Required" in forms, but the more complicated the type of form or application, the more it becomes a design issue. Creating a form that works for both those who can see web pages and those who can't, as well as all the physical limitations that rely on assistive software to access the Web, may be challenging.

There are many solutions out there. Cre8asiteforums visits the topic in force in Accessibility Design - Where To Put "required" In Forms?

Billboards exclusively promoting websites? Does you domain enable others to remember it if it were on a billboard? There is an excellent thread on WMW that examines the uses of domains on billboards and what "type" of domain would be an excellent choice for advertising on a billboard. These days having a short and memorable domain for your business or website is priceless. People are paying more today for premium domains then they were several years ago. With type-in traffic being captured by all sorts of purveyors in order to monetize it. Businesses with excellent memorable single or easy to remember words and phrases can really benefit from these domains in the offline world.

One of the admin's on WMW starts the thread with some criteria he considers useful for making a "billboard" test for your domain.

1) Easy to remember, because drivers won't be able to write them down.
2) No hyphens or non dot-com TLDs - drivers will forget hyphens, and probably type in the .com even if you advertised ".net".
3) No easy-to-confuse variations that you don't own. (E.g., plural/singular variants when applicable).
4) Relevant to the buyer's interest or need.

While I agree with most of those, there are a few things I don't. I think .net's in general can be good for billboard purposes, there are plenty of examples of companies using .net's out there. Hyphens' are not good I agree, but they are still in use. One of the members cuts it down a little and says "Any chance you can get a memorable URI in front of an audience, take it!" Can't beat that assessment.

So what about all those Web 2.0 sites with plenty of periods and compressed words such as "http://del.icio.us" or "ma.gnolia.com"? One of the members dmorison states his rule is "#1 rule is never to use anything that requires clarification when dictated. Before registering a domain, imagine yourself telling someone about your URL or your email address over the phone". Good advice.

One of the gems from this thread is the discussion of geo-targeting with domains for specific services and how in the future direct navigation will become important. Webwork, a moderator on WMW says:

Billboards are the toughest medium for recall since exposure is brief, the viewer is concentrating on something else, and writing is often impossible.

What happens, come the day, when the lemmings latch on to this idea? When you pass 213 billboards emblazened with URLs on them?

My advice to the local webmaster, the webmaster or business that is geo-targeting for a service company, a service company being one that performs locally: Make the URL real simple for the masses, bordering on brainless, to remember. Apply the same thinking that went into building the domain-as-direct-WWW-navigation model.

Some great information all around. I would encourage you to take a peak at this thread today if you have the time.

Continued discussion at WMW - Drive-by Business URL's - The Billboard Test

Any SEO/M will tell you their job description sucks because in the process of describing exactly what they do, they nearly always watch the listener's eyes glaze over, waiting for a topic that may make better sense. Same thing with user centered design/usability industry folks. That glazed eyes thing is often followed up with, "Did you say you wanted another beer?"

There really are productive reasons to incorporate SEO/M (search engine optimization and marketing) and user centered design techniques into web design. Two, well, three discussions at Cre8asiteforums, are focused on how to inject logic and practicality into web design, and why. Two of them are human-computer oriented, for when you're ready to commune with the reasons why people do things, in addition to how. It's about meeting their needs. Of course, understanding them is no piece of cake, which is why there are so many ongoing studies. Some of these studies involve how people search and use search engines, since this is how they find most web sites they'd like to use.

Some thought provoking discussions on web design and programming that meet human requirements:

Features don't matter anymore, Welcome to the Age of User Experience

"What does matter is the way we can use the "thing". How the features don't get in our face and the "thing" just lets us do what at the most basic level we want to do."

Contextual Usability?

"One thing relates to another, and understanding relationships helps us build usablility into navigation strategies."

Should links still be underlined and blue?. The responses are all over the place. Cre8tive choice fights a strong battle.

The tie-in to SEO/M? There are many, but one strong one is landing pages. Large financial investments are made into the design of landing pages for search engines for use in marketing and conversions. Persuasive design is determined to figure out what people need and want, but that's not all. Web user environment matters too. Cultures, gender, and age matter too. Links on a landing page have assignments, much like an army of soldiers.

Don't let anyone tell you that you have a silly little job.

An interesting thread over at Cre8asite Forums has members discussing links and how they should be formatted. Ironically, the thread, Should links still be underlined and blue?, is very similar to another thread that Ben (Phoenix) covered in November 2004, also at Cre8asite.

There are some good opinions regarding how to insert links in both of these threads, and may help you formulate thoughts on how to do linking on your website. As Ben noted in 2004, the main goal is visibility, especially if the link is a call to action. The main question is still "does the average user know it's a link?"

My thoughts are that as long as you pick one method and stick with it, people will use the links. For SEO purposes, I like to try and insert at least one link per page to another relevant page within the content using descriptive anchor text. I try to avoid using the "Read more" anchor text found at the bottom of many pages on the Internet.

Short post since this is basically a recycling. Read the thread at Cre8asite Forum for more opinions or to add your thoughts.

Yesterday, I posted a thread at our forums named Do Ugly Sites Earn More With AdSense? I wrote about a recent popular article named The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites. The article discusses how a site named Plenty of Fish, an ugly dating site, made over $10,000 from AdSense in one day. The logic as to why Plenty of Fish and other ugly sites (i.e. Craigs List and IMDB) make money, is because they are extremely functional, the author states. But, in my opinion, these sites are not all that functional.

Maybe Craigs List is a bad example, but consider the site that reportedly made $10,000 in one day from AdSense. Plenty of Fish is not functional, not easy to use and, in my humble opinion, hard to look at. The reason why it made so much money with AdSense is because it drives search traffic organically, people land on the site, and immediately want to click off. They find the nearest ad, and most attractive part of the page, which happens to be the AdSense ad, and clicks off. Phew, they are saved and they move on to a real dating site, that is both professional looking and functional.

Forum discussion on this topic at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

A thread over at Cre8asite Forums discusses a recent Class Action Lawsuit brought against a large retailer, complaining the site is "gibberish" to blind users. Some good points made about accessibility and the responsibility especially of large sites to ensure that their pages can be understood by disability software such as screen readers.

I found an old post by Ben from 2004 bringing up some very valid points on this issue, and it seems sad that his wishes for greater accessibility have yet to be fully adopted. Read his post: Web Accessibility Required By Law in UK - Hard Pressed to Catch On With Mainstream

See the current thread at Cre8asite Forums

Google has now re-branded Urchin to Google Analytics presenting users with better ways to “understand and influence visitor behavior and generate a higher ROI on marketing initiatives”. Yes folks! It’s offering a free hosted web analytics service, in hopes that advertisers, publishers and website owners will spend time understanding how people find their websites, navigate through them and convert on the goals of the site. With the free service, Google hopes it helps people spend money on their search marketing campaigns rather than on measurement. This is going to have a huge impact on both the search marketing and the web analytics industries. Draw your own conclusions.

But how much is really free? Google Analytics will allow you to track up to 5 million pageviews per month, no questions asked, no fees charged. So you have a BIG MONSTER website, then all they request is that you have at least one active Adwords account with an active campaign and spend $1 if you want, that’s all it takes. No more pageview caps. I’m sure they hope you spend much more than that when you see all the tracking benefits.

What’s more in this move, Google Analytics now allows integration with AdWords to better monitor “ROI metrics automatically without having to import cost data or tag keywords”, as well as tracking all of your other internet marketing initiatives as well. When you subscribe to it, you will see it as a new tab under your AdWords account. It now has executive, marketer, and webmaster dashboards for view quick summaries of “traffic, e-commerce, and conversion trends without hunting through reports.” Here is what else it offers:

• Reporting interface accessible directly from the google.com/analytics website if you don’t have an Adwords account


• Advanced visitor segmentation with over 80 web analytics reports


• Ability to track up to 50 websites within your account


• Site overlay


• Funnel visualization


• GeoTargeting with a cool map that shows where your traffic comes from
  
• It’s available in 16 languages: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and English.


• And much more…

For those worried on privacy concerns, this is what they say, “Google takes the trust people place in us very seriously, and we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of your data. We understand that web analytics data is sensitive, so we accord it the ironclad protection it deserves. Google Analytics is subject to the same industry leading privacy policy as all Google services: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html”

On a personal note, I’m also very excited with the steps Google is making because my consulting firm, iHispanic Marketing Group, is proud to announce that Google Analytics has chosen us as one among other Client Service and Support Consultants to service the global Hispanic market. With this strategic alliance we are committed to delivering professional services for training, advanced support, and expert web analytics consulting to executives, marketing managers and webmasters in both Spanish and English. Our loyalty we’ve had to Urchin and to our clients have demonstrated great rewards. Google Analytics will be a fun ride moving forward to continue building leadership with the Hispanic market for search engine marketing and internet strategy.

For discussion on this topic, you’re welcome to share your thoughts in the SearchEngineWatch Forum’s thread: Urchin Now Google Analytics, Now Free.

I saw it appear in Bloglines before I later discovered Danny Sullivan had covered it in Bloglines Announces Enhancements To Service. When I went to Bloglines, as I do about 29 times a day to check my feeds, I saw this:

So. Without bothering to memorize it, and not having a photogenic memory, plus in my normal rush, not really paying attention to the part where it states they will put the key at the bottom of the feed display (bad Kimmy!), I continued to look for interesting news and blog items.

This is when I realized I couldn't find the key or remember what it had said. I assumed they (the nice people at Bloglines) would put the short cut keys somewhere handy. The first page I checked was my SearchBrains feed. There were 69 results, which meant I had to scroll or page down a few times to get to the bottom where that danged hot key reminder thingy was stuck. Like I'm going to scroll....

A better illustration is what happened when I tested the new hotkey system to view Rand's Seomoz.org feed.

Here, you can see that if you got to this point, at the end of a long page of results, there's not a whole heck of a lot of need for "J', which lets you read the next article. But, as long as you're here, you can use the little "K'" to shoot back up or "S" to get to your next subscribed feed. Nice, for those who don't or can't use a mouse. I couldn't get the "A" to do anything, which totally violates the "Don't Make Me Think or Worse, Make Me Feel Like An Idiot" rule.

I like it. I just wish the key to the keys was placed at the top and the bottom, for those of us who have no memory or aren't inclined to pay attention in class.

Kim's note: This blog entry was dutifully supplied as per Barry's request since he took off for the day. It's not about search engines or SEO/SEM, since my "beat" is usually the usability stuff. For the 99.5 % of you that came here looking for search engine stuff meet Joe Searcher.

What are your thoughts on SEO?

Is that that new football league where the has beens go? I'm all for more sports. Anything that reduces the percentage of home improvement shows on air is great in my book.

Loyal fans of SERoundtable are aware that topics branch off into fields related to search engines, SEO forums, search engine optimization and marketing. You can see what Barry and his guest authors cover by viewing the Categories on this page, where blog posts are conveniently categorized. There’s a good reason for the broad scope.

While working as an SEO in the middle 1990’s, it wasn’t until I started testing web-based applications that I realized people trying to use web sites were pulling their hair out trying to. Add to that clients raving about great rank, but puzzled why their investment in SEO wasn’t resulting in sales despite increased traffic. I became interested in learning more about this.

Enter usability, or really, what’s known as human factors. If you feel that people matter more than bots, things suddenly, get interesting. There’s cause for more discussion than just how to link and where to stick keywords. Somebody wants to do something after finding the page or after clicking a link.

They want to understand what you want them to understand, and you have to understand how to guide them.

Take a gander at Rand Fishkin’s new Search Engine Ranking Factors article that’s getting kudos around the SEO/SEM industry.

Continue reading "We Are All Relatives. Even You, the Search Engine Marketing Professional"

It's interesting to see how the two big search engines solve problems for the same target end user. "We are not a portal" Google certainly looks like one when placed in a side by side comparison chart.

Author, writer, User Experience Director, Luke Wroblewski, made a recent blog entry comparing user interface solutions for both Google and Yahoo. In Google vs. Yahoo! Interface Design, Luke writes:

"At a high level, Yahoo! has better integrated business goals with their product designs. For example, their comparison shopping site features multiple entry points that better match consumer shopping behaviors (browse by brand, browse by category, featured products, etc.) than Froogle�s single search box. Yahoo! also has more robust answers to vertical information finding (Travel, Finance, Movies, etc.) than Google�s Web Search features. That doesn�t negate the value of Google�s simple solutions to these tasks. It�s just that a simple solution sometimes requires something in addition to (or other than) a search box."

At the bottom of the comparison shots are the two main search pages, side by side. Strikingly similiar, aren't they?

Amazon has jumped into the simplicity-is-hot wave, with their new barebones header navigation. It used to take me several minutes to figure out where Amazon stuck their gift certificate stuff, but now, it's the first text link under the tabs.

From an information architecture perspective, all three sites are a treasure trove of solutions for how to handle mammoth sites. For anyone thinking of breaking their Google-habit, seeing the two search engines neck and neck may help make that break easier.

It's no secret to you all that search engines are racing to see who cn come up with the best, new, innovative technology and still make search results logical, pertinent and "just what you asked for".

The usability industry (a generic term that nobody in the industry likes but are stuck with), has been conversing on the topic of search results - same as you all in the SEO/SEM industry. Here's a bit of one recent talk covered:

Recent Innovations in Search and Other Ways of Finding Information

Panel: Peter Norvig, Google; Mark Fletcher, Ask Jeeves; Udi Manber, A9; Ken Norton, Yahoo!; Jakob Nielsen, NN Group; Rashmi Sinha, Moderator">

as reported in Innovations in Search Results Pages

"# There�s a lack of context around search queries (esp. social context). Information about information (beyond prioritized relevancy) on the search results page could introduce much-needed context for users.

# Consumer needs are increasingly being better met by �vertical� search functionality (products, local, travel, multimedia, personal, etc.). Search results pages are addressing this by surfacing vertical search paths like �book results for�� and �local results for��. This change illustrates a need to move beyond prioritized item lists into different organizational structures (i.e. vertical paths and prioritized relevancy).

# Search queries are becoming more focused on the �long tail� of information. Ask Jeeves has a continually increasing number of unique queries per day. This may mean users are looking for more specific information and would benefit from more contextual information.

Continue reading "How To Make Search Engine Results User Centered"

A new thread at Cre8asite Forums named The Future of Results Pages? touches on the topic of whether or not we will be locked into the current way the search engines display the results on a page. The thread points to a blog entry named Innovations in Search Results Pages, where he asked the question "what makes it the right interface solve for displaying search results"? He asked this to a nice group of panelist, Peter Norvig, Google; Mark Fletcher, Ask Jeeves; Udi Manber, A9; Ken Norton, Yahoo!; Jakob Nielsen, NN Group (very interesting read).

Bill adds to the thread with a comprehensive listing of papers and articles about the topic. Stock (Grumpus) also adds his thoughts saying;

The notion that the way we read search results may lock us into this way rather than a new way is complete rubbish. Comparing it to a Qwerty/Dvorak or (as the article did) Imperial/Metric Systems analogy just doesn't work either.

In essence, the danger we have of getting locked into the current means of reading search results is akin to the act of telling me that I have but one choice - drive my car all the time, or drive my moped all the time, but I don't have the option of choosing the best (easiest, most efficient, most productive) one for the particular task I have at hand.

Gem of a thread.

Think I'm kidding, do you?

One of the highlights for me at the New York 2005 Search Engine Strategies Conference was the presentation "Searh Algorithm Research & Developments". In addition to Orion's (Dr. E. Garcia) presentation (think Math), I became fascinated with references by the presenters to "personalizing search", "co-occurrance", hubs and concept searches.

Mike Grehan said that keyword search is "primitive", adding that personalization is where the changes are coming.

SEO/SEMs aren't the only folks interested in or studying search engines, algorithms and user behavior.

At the recent CHI 2005 (Conference on Human Computer Interaction, aka HCI), a speaker by the name of Susan Dumais, Senior Microsoft Corp. Researcher, gave a presentation about search engines and user behavior.

Continue reading "A Search Engine in Every Bathroom"

Danny Sullivan's round up article on Googles's Autolink experiment is fantastic and a must read for anyone who owns a web site and cares about the experience of their visitors.

In Google Toolbar's AutoLink & The Need For Opt-Out he writes,

"Threadwatch describes a JavaScript blocking solution cooked up by Search Guild. Download the solution (instructions are provided), insert it into your web pages. The same Threadwatch thread is also tracking any new solutions that come up -- some new server-side ones have just been posted.

Meanwhile, an anti-anti-AutoLink option appears to also be out there for users who want to override publishers trying to prevent AutoLink. I say appears because it seems like a clunky workaround that I can't really understand -- and looking at the comments posted, some others don't get it as well.

I mention it mainly because it highlights how quickly things have become absurd. You have third-parties working to prevent AutoLink and potentially others working to prevent preventing AutoLink. It's a mess."

This "mess" is born out of the fact that Google is experimenting on our web sites, and in some cases, possibly doing harm. For every parent who has a kid who has a web site on the Internet, the fact that a Google Autolink can now present a map to your house, if that web site has your address in the content, is the stuff nightmares are made of.

From the usability standpoint, removing the right to control the experience of your web site visitor is cause for concern. If someone didn't hyperlink a book, there may be a reason for that. Google doesn't ask you. The Autolink will take your visitor to Amazon anyway. Away from your web site.

I have much to say about this in Danny Sullivan's Review of Google Toolbar's AutoLink

Won't bore you with it all here :)

In one of Seth Godin's maddening blog posts about the SEO industry he wrote,

"Just a short time ago, SEO was seen as a shortcut by marketers unwilling to do the hard work of actually making a product and a site that mattered. In that era, SEO was the quick way to get cheap traffic�cheap so you could afford to waste it."

What's infuriating to me is that he must've had a very bad date with a dishonest SEO/SEM company, because it was no "short time ago" in my book. As far as I could see, way back in the late 1990's when I was an SEO, there was trouble. I made no guarantee's to clients about how rich and famous they'd get when I was done because in many cases, their sites were in bad shape.

No amount of SEO hoola hoop manuvers was going to help them as long as their business requirements didn't have "Design it so customers can use it" written in there somewhere.

I'm not the only one who recognized the disconnect between marketing for search engines and design that sells. Nestled inside more and more companies are usability specialists working alongside web designers and SEO's. This trend is booming.

When my blog was selected by usability and web design tools software developers, TechSmith, as their Blog of the Month for February, they wondered if I'd write about this very topic.

Which I did, in Why Search Engine Marketing Has A Passion for Web Site Usability

It's not that I expect Seth Godin will read it. But it sure feels to pull out my pom poms once in awhile and cheer you all on.

The title attribute is used by SEOs to try to do anything to rank higher and more importantly as a method to describe to a disabled person what a link is about. But some people over use them. Take a look at the image below. You will notice I mouse over a title of a thread and a second later, the title attribute is activated, blocking the thread titles underneath it. If you click on the image below, it will show you my frustration in a QuickTime movie.

Picture yourself standing blindfolded, in a meeting with department heads, stakeholders, programmers, user interface engineers, quality assurance software testing engineers, project manager and you.

Someone is spinning you around and around, asking you questions about everything from information architecture, to user testing, to what the user habits of every 12th visitor to page 3, hub 5 will be. The stakeholder is demanding to meet his deadline and the department head will fire you if conversions don't meet 2nd quarter sales projections.

Your job title is ???.

You're important because of ????.

The only person who can possibly give you any sort of compassion is the company SEO/SEM, who meanwhile is handcuffed to their cubicle until Google ranks the site in the top position for 300 keywords and stays in that spot without budging. Ever. Or the SEO dies.

Continue reading "Pin The Tail on The Usability Donkey"

Web accessibility laws have long been on the books for a number of years. In the UK, The Disability Discrimination Act was enacted five years ago in order to force provision of access for users of commercial websites.

The basic summary of the Act:

"The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include accessible websites."

But how effective has it been? I found this information on a thread at Cre8asite Forums. It intrigued me, and I had to find out more. This article relates that even though laws are in effect in the UK for helping apply technical standards to ensure accessibility in many commercial websites, it appears some of the efforts have gone half done or apparently not at all. Many companies the article claims may be moving to more acceptable accessibility standards but not changing web design as a result. What ends up happening is a largely gross user experiences that makes navigating for the disabled a task in itself. Some of the main things left out include leaving out efforts in changing the navigation and content. Additionally one common issue that is arising, and one I thought was applicable to everyone working on usability is the incorrect use of the ALT tag.

So for example we plan to hand over the work of making our site accessible to webmaster or tech guy or even ourself. We go into the code and start coding the ALT tags. For the image with our logo we put "image" or we put "company logo". Ok we just made the first step to making our site accessible, right? Not even close. What is left out is the usability part of the equation, an ALT tag with the effect or our company name, example: ABC Corp, including a short description describes way much more than "image" and "company logo".

The article says that education is a critical part of enacting a law like this. A mandate that websites needs to focus on accessibility but leaves out the fact that some of the information comes with a learning curve. Not all tech people are accessibility experts, nor usability experts. The user is often left out of the equation in such a law, and likely so such things are only half as effective as they should be.

So what should companies do to reach out to disabled customers on the web? Applying standards (already in place) with the accessibility requirements. The World Wide Web Consortium, as such a place for these. Some may complain as pointed out that W3C standards impact the look and feel of the site, and ruin the use of more advanced technology. I disagree, merging the use of both would be quite an accomplished than focusing entirely on one. I can create a super accessible website conforming to standards in no time, and one that uses advanced Flash technology but merging them would be the best.

The article makes a good statistic that I can't entirely validate, but it seems on track that 9 million people in Britian have some form of disability. Enough people to make them a shining light on the radar for any government or much less commercial website.

I prefixed the title of this entry with the words "must have". That is because every Web site must have a custom 404 error page. What is a standard, or non custom 404 error page? Well, every go to a URL and find this?

I am sure you have, these are the default apache 404 error pages. But you are in luck, you can create easy to use, custom 404 error pages. Apple's 404 page is often talked about when creating a custom 404 error page. For example, go to http://www.apple.com/seroundtable/, there is obviously no such page at Apple, but they give you the following page (I only captured a portion of the screen, see the link above for the full page).

Now isn't that much better? Of course, we all get lazy and we push off making these useful pages. For example, this site doesn't have a custom 404 page, I think I will add one today, if I get around to it. But my corporate site has a custom 404 page. The rustybrick custom 404 page includes the line of reassurance, "Can't find what your looking for?", a Google search box that limits the search to my site, and a site map - all included within the standard navigation.

Please don't forget, a custom 404 is both good for your users and the search engines (however, the search engines really would prefer a standard 404 page - I think).

This entry comes by way of a post at Cre8asite named Custom 404 Error Pages. The post has more resources on how to build a custom 404 pages and other sample 404 pages (good and bad).

Are underlined links better for in your site's navigation? There is an active thread at Cre8asite discussing the various reasons why you might underline or not underline links. It goes into how users might be "trained" to recognize underline links in the various parts of your site. Why its good to be consistent with your links for the sake of usability and what colors are most recognized. Naturally underlined blue links are seen as the most recognized, they have been a standard method for using links correctly for quite some time. But what about different colors, hovers, and straight non-underlined links? There are a couple of approaches being discussed that help illustrate whether underling works best.

One of the members reasons that it depends on the "context" of the link, and your intention for the user. Do you assume that your visitors are pretty intuitive and can easy decipher where to click next? For those that are not as web savvy, nothing beats a blue underlined link, a tradition even my never touched a computer in his life grandfather can learn to use pretty quickly. Nick W goes on to say that you should underline links in the body of your copy. Putting inline lines inside a sentence and making them stand out eliminates the need for extra thought which can help them navigate better. One particular idea for use in content was to use a "dotted" underline in blue that goes to red on hover for making it clear that the link leads to a page somewhere else. You can then use the standard underline in the top and side navigation sections to easily define the various types of links on the site. Those in the navigation within the site, and those links that lead off the page.

The discussion goes on to discuss the various coloring options for links. The member Scratch, asks the question "Is the user 100% obvious that these are links?". If so then you have the option to change the text decoration. If it isn't obvious with decoration, maybe consider why it isn't obvious.

Continued discussing Links in navigation, to underline or not to underline?

Very good thread that I hope gets more responses is being discussed over at Cre8asite Forums, about the nature of simple websites that help communcate and instill trust in visitors. A recent article talks about how people trust simply designed websites, and that having a plain text, unadorned format seems soothing and trustworthy as something that is plastered with gaudy graphics and fast talking content.

Some of the members detailed their own options, specifically how this concept is also used in engineering, that if something looks "good" then it must be good. The member radiorental details some mental steps one might take when viewing a simple website, such as:

In this case, the brain makes the following assumptions that lead to trust
1)front end looks simple therefore the backend must be
2)If backend is simple then there is less to go wrong
3)if its less likely to go wrong then I trust it will not.

simple = trust

This makes sense, and I know myself I have often gone through these steps in websites I have visited. Deciphering the technology behind the scenes can take up some of your thought time. You want to figure it out, and translate that into how well you might trust what they are saying or what they are doing. If it looks to complicated and there are questionable underlying reasons why they want your business, email, or information then I don't put my trust in them.

I recently had a discussion with a colleague about simple and ugly websites and how they are effective in selling. Ugly websites do sell, but only when that ugly isn't too strong. Simple websites do help sell because of trust, but only when they aren't too polished and actually make an effort to sell without all the glitz and glitter. The interesting thing is when it comes down to it, how we present our website whether it be personal or professional tells a lot about our motives. Many professional or company websites out there are very polished, old school, nice business sites, but what does a professional website say = its got commercial motives (most of the time). A good example of a large site that does quite well and whose simplicity helps build trust is craigslist.com. It's as simple as you can get, but very indepth with a focus that could translate trust to help the visitor reach the information they are looking for. No guady graphics, no advertising on the homepage, just simple trustable links and information that can't be maligned with something else. Upon your next redesign or new website, you might take some of these ideas into focus, because you might be stuck with a design for quite awhile.

Read the original article that prompted the threads - Where web surfers go when they haven't slept a wink

A thread at Cre8asite named Where to put the site map link?, discusses the location of the link in terms of page placement and number of pages.

Some suggest in the thread to place the site map link at the top, header, portion of your pages. Some say, place it at the footer. I personally do it differently on different sites. What does it depend on? The layout of the site.

I am a believer of placing the site map link on every single page, not just the home page. In addition, I do not like breaking out site maps into sub site maps. I feel that site maps that have sub site maps are more category, to sub category to sub sub category pages. And thus should be treated as such.

Found a interesting discussion today over at Cre8asite Forums, about keeping in mind usability for senior citizens. While it may be something that we don't necessary consider in the usability for our sites, it may be good to do so. We all age, and I know that sometimes when thinking about usability we often look at it from our age range. If you are a senior citizen and you are designing a page for them, then you will most likely provide information that may interest them. But what if they can't access the information? What is the font size is too small for them to read? This is the first article I have come across as of recent that details specific strategies for working with an older age group, not necessary those with disabilities.

The article goes on to talk about "nice summary on how our vision changes as we age along with design guidelines on how to compensate somewhat for these changes". As well as how our hearing changes as we age. What was interesting in the article was how for those that are older, the experience may be the opposite of what someone younger might experience. This fact corresponds to how our cognitive processing changes and how we respond to visual stimuli.

Worth a good read for those that factoring in an older demographic into their sites.

Read Designing for the Elderly

Discuss Usabilty for the Elderly at Cre8asite Forums.

It's times like these that I really empathize with web designers struggling to meet the demands of "How to build a web site that will do such and such and nobody will get lost or confused doing that such and such."

I can also understand why they shriek in horror when someone mentions the word "usability".

To think that a study on breadcrumb navigation required TEACHING participants on how to use navigation...well, read this from the article I mentioned earlier this week, called Do you hear what I hear? ... or why it may not matter that users still ignore breadcrumbs

  "A recent paper by Hull, Chaparro and Halcomb (2004) builds on this approach, seeking to identify how much instruction is necessary to teach users to see and use breadcrumbs. Within their study, they asked participants to find and select a list of items (related to a camping trip) on a major retail site. Before setting a participant loose on the site, they presented her one of 3 levels of instruction about navigation:

No instruction
Modeled exposure to breadcrumb navigation with no verbal instruction (what they refer to as "mere exposure" a la Zojanc (1968)1
Modeled Exposure to breadcrumb navigation accompanied by explicit instructions to use breadcrumb navigation
The explicit instructions group used breadcrumb to navigate approximately 1/3 more than other groups. This seemingly small increase in use of breadcrumbs to move around resulted in significantly faster task completion, fewer visited pages and less reliance on the back button.

Hull and colleagues conclude that minimal training may be sufficient to get users to increase their use of breadcrumbs, and as such increase their task efficiency. Specifically, they argue that training makes sense in Intranet environments, where the ROI for the training would be more than offset by increased productivity.

Compare this to a common usability "rule of thumb" that essentially says, "If you have to show them how to use your web site, it's not built right." This is similar to its cousin, "You should never rely on a FAQ or Help section. The answers should be built into the site."

The research paper does inject this - "Still, the idea that users need to be trained should be a red flag. And the idea of providing training to public Web site users is not viable. Maybe these users are telling us something about breadcrumbs."

Which brings me to the mountain. Can you believe that so much research has been done on breadcrumb navigation and still so many everyday folks don't know what they are?

Continue reading "Making a Mountain Out of a Breadcrumb Trail"

Not long ago I realized I'd taken it for granted that everyone knows what "breadcrumb" navigation is, and I was wrong.

Sometimes when the subject of using breadcrumb navigation comes up in web design discussions at Cre8asiteForums, we're gently reminded by courageous members that not everyone knows what we're referring to.

At a recent Usability Workshop conducted by Scottie Claiborne (I assisted) at Jill Whalen's High Rankings SEO Seminar in Boston, some sites that were reviewed could have implemented breadcrumb navigation to help their visitors drill down inside sections. But when we suggested this, attendees asked "What is breadcrumb navigation?"

I've written about them in a few articles, such as How To Impress Search Engines and Users - Focus: Web Site Navigation. I wrote, "Breadcrumbs are used in conjunction with regular navigation. They don't replace it. They're nearly always text links, in a smaller font."

An example of them in use is in Scottie's Successful-Sites newsletter web site, in her contributing authors section.

Studies have been conducted on their use by Human Factors International, and another paper has just been released, which you may be interested in reading. Kath Straub, Ph.D., CUA, Chief Scientist of HFI, and Dr. Eric Schaffer, Ph.D., CPE, founder and CEO of HFI cover the topic in
Do you hear what I hear? ... or why it may not matter that users still ignore breadcrumbs

"In the last decade, we have seen some important changes in the way that users behave on the Web. We know now that on information pages, users will scroll. We also know that 3 clicks to service is not required, as long as the navigation path accurately reflects and reinforces the users information model. We have learned that if designed from the interaction perspective, rollover menus can be usable. (Designers still struggle with this last one.) This evolution may reflect the fact that users now have more exposure to the web and are more familiar with how it works. Alternatively, this could reflect that descriptions of user behavior in the browser environment is becoming more sophisticated. Or maybe it's a bit of both.

There are some things, however, that user's simply do not seem prepared to learn on their own. Multiple-select interactions is one of those things. Breadcrumb navigation is another."

What it all boils down is what usability usually does boil down to, sooner or later. Design choices and elements are dictated by site requirements and even more so on who will use it and how they will use the web site.

This means discovering who uses the site and watching how they interact with it.

Continue reading "Latest Breadcrumb Navigation Research"

Call it "interactive design", "interactivity", "user experience" or "usability", the word may contour up a different experience for each of us. You may view the web as a hostile environment where the only solution is to test a user experience to make that environment more "usable" for those concerned. Or vice versa. Which ever way you look at it, usability is becoming a larger part of how the web works. I came across an interesting thread on Cre&site forums, about the nature of this word and how it has changed over time. I had not thought about the term in this way and its relation to other words similar to it. Barry Welford, a member at Cre8site, posted a poll asking if people call it "usability" or something else. The overall vote leaned towards "usability" with some people voting for "interaction design."

There were some interesting points made about the use of the words. Cre8pc said "usability is a common term and understood immediately...even the kids know what I mean". Scratch another member argued that "Interaction design isn't just "making things interactive" -- It's the discipline of designing, or architecting, interactive systems."

For those interested in "usability/interactivity" it's a worthwhile thread to check out. Continuing reading Usability - I say Interactivity, what do you say?