Web Usability

Web Usability is one of those things that are usually missed in web design. We construct our pages in such a way that a user will carefully read each and every paragraph we write.

This indeed is not the proper way to design a site. A typical user does not read a website, but instead scans the page for anything that grabs its interest. It could be a particular word, a contrasting colour, or even a familiar convention such as a shopping cart icon. All these things are ways of getting the user to be interested in your site.

A great book on this topic is Steve Krug’s – Don’t Make Me Think. It deals with many problems with websites. One thing it suggests is to cut down half your words on every page, and then cut down another half. This reinforces the fact that users scan, and will not take time to read useless happy text.

Steve Krug also mentions something as simple as making your links obvious saves the user that fraction of a second needed to ask the question, Is this clickable?

SmashingMagazine.com also lists many important things to consider when making a website.

Now that we have looked at some of the issues when designing, we need to find out what the solution is. Well the answer is TEST, TEST, and TEST again. Once you have worked on a site for a long time, you eyes miss obvious things that hinder your end users experience and all it takes is a little time.

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Written by Brenley Dueck

One Response to “Web Usability”

Nur Wetter. « Reinseite Says:
July 21st, 2009 at 2:36 am
[...] – so leicht und flockig, wie nur-wetter.de. Keine blinkenden Werbebanner, kein lästiger Happytext, den eh niemand liest. Einfach nur eine Suche, ein Städtevorschlag, ansprechende Gestaltung und [...]