Website Usability
Guidelines
A website that seems cool to one person can seem absolutely horrible to
another. That's why anybody who says that a site is good or bad overall can
be on pretty shaky ground.
However, there are objective ways to determine whether a site is actually
usable or not.
We enjoy many of these "cool" technologies (when they're used correctly),
and can implement them too when it makes sense. However, they just don't
make sense for most websites. Like most people, when we surf the Web it's
usually to find some information - not be entertained. (Hey, when we want to
be visually entertained we usually turn on that old reliable standby, the
TV.)
The following rules provide the foundation of a usable site. And to
paraphrase that old saying about good design (that "form follows function"),
a site has to be usable before it can truly be cool.
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Rule #1 - Make it Quick
- A website has only 8 seconds to capture visitors' attention before
they bail and go to another site.
- Most pages should be displayed within 4 seconds. The longest most
visitors will wait is 10 seconds.
- The majority of visitors surf the Web with slow dial-up modems (the
average connection speed is only 34kbps).
Rule #2 - Keep it Simple
- Limit the major navigation to between 6 and 8 choices. Studies show
that's the maximum number of items people can keep in the short term
memory (that's why local phone numbers are so much easier to remember
than long distance numbers).
- Keep the navigation consistent. Don't force visitors to learn
different navigation schemes in different parts of the site.
- Don't use animation unless it's called for - it overwhelms the eye.
(There are only 7 situations where animation is appropriate). It also
takes longer to be displayed and "breaks" Search Engines.
Rule #3 - Make it "Searchable"
- Search Engines look for actual text. They pay almost no attention to
graphics (even graphics that look like text) and programming code (like
JavaScript, used for menus and other special effects).
- "Intro" or "Splash" screens block Search Engines, preventing them
from reviewing the site (unless extra work is done to help out the
Search Engine).
- Flash and frames block Search Engines too (again, unless extra work
is done to help out the Search Engine).
Rule #4 - It Works for Most People
- Websites need to be compatible with the types of computers and Web
browsers that most people use.
- Use simple, plain HTML whenever possible - it's the most compatible.
- "Special" features, such as Flash animation, client-side scripting
(programming), etc. increase the chance that the site won't work for
everybody. They also make it harder to update the site.
Rule #5 - Keep it Current
- The quickest way for a website to lose credibility is to contain
obviously outdated information. Even small things like a copyright date
of "2000" tip off visitors that the site isn't up to date.
- Make the site easy to update. That way it's more likely to actually
be updated on time.
What's Wrong With Flash
- Encourages the use of animation when it isn't appropriate or needed,
which slows down the display of the Web page
- Breaks "normal" navigation - the Back button doesn't work and
clickable elements aren't intuitive.
- Breaks the ability of Search Engines to search and index the site
(unless extra work is done to help out the Search Engine).
- Hard to bookmark.
- Harder to update (compared to "normal" HTML).
- May have to download the Flash utility if it hasn't already been
installed (or it's outdated).
- For a quick, insightful, and entertaining read, see
what industry leader Vincent Flanders has to say in
When Good Flash Goes Bad.
So Why's Flash So Popular?
- Web designers like it! It's a new cool trend and it's fun to work
with.
- For those times that animation is actually appropriate, Flash has
advantages over many other animation technologies (e.g. uses vector
graphics, streaming, and is widely supported).
- It's good for online advertising. Advertisers like it because it's
difficult to tell your Web browser to block it, and the animation
dominates your eyes.
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A Web page that is divided into different "scrollable" areas (in addition
to the scroll bars that normally appear on the very right and bottom edges
of the Web browser) is using frames.
When frames first came onto the scene back in 1996, Web designers rushed
to implement them into their websites (similar to their enthusiasm for Flash
these days). When the problems with frames were finally widely acknowledged,
a lot of time and money was then spent to remove them.
What's Wrong With Frames
- Breaks the ability of Search Engines to search and index the site
(unless extra work is done to help out the Search Engine).
- Hard to bookmark - what's in the Web browser's address line doesn't
always match what's being displayed in the frames.
- Can make printing difficult. Many older browsers have a hard time
printing framed Web pages correctly.
So Are Frames Good for Anything?
About the only good use of frames is in "meta"-sites.
Meta-sites are websites that embed other websites in themselves. An
example is www.Ask.com, which is a natural-language Search Engine site.
After you perform a search at www.Ask.com and then click on a website that
was found, that "found" site is displayed in a frame that's embedded in the
www.Ask.com site.
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Besides being more useful to its visitors, a usable website is also
usually:
- Cheaper: Usable sites tend to be simpler, which means they're easier
to build, as well as update later.
- More likely to be kept keep current: A site that's easy to update is
also more likely to be kept up to date.
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The general usability rules we listed above come from our many years of
Web building experience.
The specific details mentioned in these rules, however, come from an
assortment of respected Web usability experts, whose studies confirm our
anecdotal observations.
To see for yourself that we aren't just making wild, unsubstantiated, or
untrue claims about usability, go to our
Web Usability
References page!
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