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Summary: Fabulous follow-up to "Designing Web Usability"
Review: This book serves as a follow-up by the world's guru on Web Usability, Jakob Nielsen, two years after the release of his successful "Designing Web Usability." This time around, he picked up where he left and expanded on his previous work on Usability, by selecting the Internet's 50 most important properties, and deconstructing their Home Pages: Amazon, [other websites], you name it! They're all there, and he's very critical -sometimes a little too much, in my opinion, since (as we all know) in the world of design, compromise is one of the unavoidable evils. Check out the book, though. You will find a wealth of very useful ideas and criticism you can directly apply to your Home Page.To me, a Web Project Manager, this book came in VERY handy, allowing me to convey some basic Web design concepts accross the board in my company. At this point, we have applied several of Nielsen's ideas to our two web sites with extreme success, while educating managers in areas outside of IT about why certain ideas for a web site won't work, while others have gotten to the point of becoming web design standards. Get it: it will become your biggest ally.
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Summary: A year later, it continues to be useful!
Review: It's been over a year now since I first read and reviewed this book, co-authored by the world's guru on Web Usability, Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir. Still it provides incredible advice on what to do and what not to do on a Homepage. As much criticism as the author's seem to throw at web sites, if you read it, think Jay Leno and have fun! Don't take it personally and THINK whether you might be making the same mistakes on your own web site. For instance, a number of the sites featured in the book are still (even after subsequent redesigns) incurring in the same mistakes, some of them not even related to Web Design, but rather to Marketing at large. In fact, one of the most common ones continues to be the lack of an effective tag line that explains clearly what the site/company is about. After over a year, it's surprising how useful this book can continue to be, in spite of the very dynamic nature of the Web. As a Web Project Manager, this book is a continuous reference for ideas and pitfall watchouts. Plus it is a very helpful guide to educate staff in areas outside of IT about why certain ideas for a web site don't quite work, while others have gotten to the point of becoming web design standards. Get it: it can become your biggest ally! ;)
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Summary: Maybe more webmasters should read his books.
Review: In his first book, "Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity", published two years earlier (December 1999), Jakob Nielsen presented a comprehensive stylebook for presenting web pages. Although a tough read for one sitting, it was one of the few books that presented an overall methodology to an organization's web presence. Since that book presented a lot of information most of which I believe was passed over in search of techniques that directly related to the reader; he stated in his first book that he would follow up with a more illustrative volume. This book narrows the field down somewhat by only concentrating on homepages. The first part of the book consists of a chapter on "Homepage Guidelines" which encompasses the first 52 pages. The following 250 pages or so show screen shots of various homepages from large organizations. Some examples are Citigroup, ExxonMobil, FedEX, General Motors, and Microsoft. There is some satisfaction however in seeing some large company with a richly funded web program stumble or just plain get it wrong. It makes my mistakes a little more tolerable. The first page of a typical "deconstruct" is a screen shot of the company's homepage. This is followed by a description of the company, a short critique, a color map of the page showing areas devoted to content of interest, self promotion, advertising, navigation, filler, browser controls etc. A breakdown of the actual percentages is illustrated with a pie chart. The third page shows the homepage with numbers representing each of the points (mostly mistakes) that the author is trying to highlight. Yes, as other reviewers stated some of the mistakes he points out can be a bit repetitive, such as logo placements, taglines, and redundant navigations buttons, in general he (along with Marie Tahir) he gives you specific examples with which you can learn from. Both his books have helped me, if only in thinking of web pages as one avenue of communication. Is your webpage communicating to others in a straightforward, consistent matter in the least amount of time as possible? Two main themes do shine through in both his books; make the file size small and the presentation clear so that users have to spend the minimum amount of time navigating your site, and don't over sell your links. Once users click to a link and it is not what they expected they just might not come back to your site in the future.
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Summary: 50 Web Site Deconstructed
Review: According to this book, users spend most of their time on other sites than your site... When a user visits your site, he/she will be bringing a large load of mental baggage accumulated from prior visits to thousands of other home pages. So by the time they reach your web site, users have accumulate a generic mental model of the way a homepages are supposed to work, based on their experience on these other sites. It is a very interesting point. According to authors of the book, there are few large web sites that might count themselves among the first 10 to 20 sites visited by new users. And design of these web sites dictate the design conventions that a user will expect when he/she visits other web sites. Example of some of these conventions mentioned in the book are: upper-left corner is the best place for a site logo
upper-right corner are more generic locations for search widgets and "help" links
Navigation of the site is best usable either as a tab-style (such as in amazon.com) or as a column on left side of the page (such as in CNN.com)
Links should be blue-underlined, and visited links should be purple-underlined
footer navigation links should be only for "foot-note-related" content and should be limited to no more than 7 links
on and on it goes
So how do authors derive these conclusions? The process is actually very interesting. They conduct studies of top 50 chosen web sites and group their findings into conventions. The book also "deconstructs" those 50 chosen Home Pages, and provides annotated analysis. You may find it interesting. Among those are such sites as About.com, Accenture.com, Yahoo.com, BBC Online, CNET, Disney, eBay, Microsoft, IBM and many more. Although majority of the book is on annotating home pages, authors also give some generic tips on home page design. Some of those tips I recall are: liquid page layout is preferred over fixed sized tables
the most optimal page width is 760 pixels (for fixed layout)
page length of the homepage should be around two full screens, but not more than four
frames suck big time
horizontal scrolling is the curse
"Guest Books" are not for pros
Do not use exclamation marks!
and on and on it goes
While reading homepage annotations, I felt very strong emphasis on the title of the homepages (the one between and tags). These tags are easily left un-noticed, one would think. But properly chosen titles make big difference while bookmarking your page. Try it yourself.In other words, do not start your titles with "The" and "Welcome", because in person's favorites lists, it would be misplaced in the alphabetical order. I strongly recommend this book to anyone venturing in Web Designs. P.S. Although the book is on Home Page usability, the book itself doesn't seem "usable" at all. Size of the book is so clumsy that doesn't fit in a standard sized book shelf.
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Summary: Definitely not scannable
Review: The first 50 or so pages provide a good summary of the authors' advice on making web sites usable, and back some of it up with statistics. This is valuable information. The remainder of the book is comprised of the home page reviews. On page 55 the authors state, "Some of our comments may seem picky; we have tried to comment on everything big and small. In terms of sheer volume, the smaller usability items dominate the reviews. Most of these minor problems will not prevent a determined user from using the site, so they are not true usability catastrophes like the ones we often find when we study people trying to complete an entire task on the web." This pretty much tells you what you will see in the remainder of the book. Unfortunately, the reviews do not make it clear whether the authors consider each home page a usable home page or not. Positive comments and problems are both noted in the home page reviews, but not visually differentiated from each other. In addition, there is usually no indication as to whether a given comment represents a "minor problem" or a "usability catastrophe". Nor is there any indication as to which review findings are supported by research; many seem to be based purely on the personal opinions and preferences of the authors. I disagreed with many of these statements based not only on my own browsing experience, but also on my experience providing user support. These factors limited the usefulness of the reviews for me.
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Summary: GREAT EXAMPLES!
Review: For you who wants to find FACTS and not only theories about usability, this is great!
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Summary: Usability Jihad!
Review: Nielsen, the usability guru (extremist?) and Tahir goes on a crusade against well-known sites, attacking the weak points in terms of usability of each site (they call it "deconstructing"). In spite of the somewhat extreme view of homepage design (what did you expect from Nielsen?), this book is very useful to get a purely-usability viewpoint. The first part of the book gives statistical data on the placement of various components of a homepage, such as the logo, search, etc. This is important in usability since users will spend more time on other sites than on yours. The data gives a good guideline on the basic page structure of a usable web page. The other part of the book is the part that "deconstructs" the homepages of the 50 sites. This part is well-illustrated, with first a clean screenshot of the page followed by one with the weaknesses pointed out. This part is an excellent way to learn usability inductively; the 50 case studies are ample for one to practice her usability critiquing skills, which would be useful to use on one's own site. This book is focused on usability -- not entirely helpful if you are trying to design a pretty site. Also, don't try too hard to satisfy all of Jakob's usability requirements, or your site might end up looking like useit.com. This book belongs to the bookshelf of every web designer.
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Summary: Invaluable book for web designers & directors
Review: First off, this is weird critiquing a critique book. ;-) At the beginning of Homepage Usability is a big list of informative guidelines for creating a a useable homepage and a few pages devoted to homepage design statistics -- showing what other people are doing, but that's not this book's raison d'etre. It's the usability critiques -- I found it absolutely invaluable showing these 50 websites next to eachother. Some of the advice seemed unbalanced and a lot was repeated, but the authors really dissected each site thoroughly. At times the authors seemed to dispense anti-graphic design, lowest common denominator advice which may get you fumiing like it did me...but fortunately that is kept to a minimum. Two gripes: One, something that was missing from the book that I would have liked to have seen is perhaps a simple chart or scale showing from 1-10 how "usable" each website is, to complement their critiques. Second, one of the sites that were reviewed was going out of business -- what's the point?
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Summary: Good suggestions, but very repetitive
Review: Tightly focused on homepage usability, hence the title. 113 usability success elements are presented, and 50 popular websites are evaluated based on the success elements. After about 5 reviews, they become quite redundant, and many are nitpicky. Most web sites reviewed made the same common mistakes, which are harped on throughout the book. I stopped reading them after about 15, and then just skimmed the most popular ones thereafter. Repeated at least 20 times are these themes: * Title your pages appropriately
* Get a good tagline
* Provide example content on the homepage, not just links
* Write headlines as succinctly as possible, while retaining greatest possible meaning
* Have a search box available
* Categorize links and sections appropriately
* Use good labels
* Use images wisely, and not gratuitously
* Beware of ads, and anything looking like them Readers of "Designing Web Usability" won't find nearly as much substance in this book, but Nielsen fans won't be disappointed. He certainly is consistent!
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Summary: Good Information for Web Developers
Review: My first exposure to this book was from a handout in a class on web design. The handout was a photocopy of a couple pages of statistics on where to place search and what to label it. It makes sense to put our web page elements in expected places so that users will have an easier time finding the information they need. I felt the guidelines in the first chapter were good. They were easy to understand and organized effectively. I wish, however, that there was a summarized checklist-format of these. The topics have an introductory paragraph that can help convince bosses and customers of the importance of the following suggested rules. For example, search is said to be important and easy to use and find. The numbered tips on how to do just that are easily implemented (and also easy to finally form into words why a site's search isn't "doing it for you"). Since I surf the web a lot, it didn't surprise me that input boxes should be big enough. I have seen search fields way too small on places I wouldn't expect it .... The most valuable - and most easily outdated - part of the book is the Homepage Design Statistics. For example, it is suggested we design for the median page width of 770 pixels. But how long will this be true? The authors make a good point for having a page that resizes to your window (liquid layout), but it should still work for those with smaller browser windows. I prefer liquid and was surprised that only 18% of the 50 homepages surveyed used a liquid layout. Perhaps this number has changed since the book's printing. Most of the information is timeless like calling the link to job openings "Careers" instead of "Join Our Staff." The rest of the book is dedicated to actual reviews of various well-known sites. The points found and discussed are labeled on a screen shot of the site so that it's easy to see what the authors are talking about. ... I will reference the tips often and have already started using some of the terms I discovered in this book ("Smiling Ladies"). But, I felt like I was repeatedly being sold Nielsen's usability reports or testing. I felt that here are some great tips but not even half of what you need so go to the online store and buy more. ... Another problem I have with the book is the actual book. Why is it too cumbersome? It is attractive to look at but doesn't fit well on my desk shelf with the other frequently used books. The binding is also already starting to complain from use. Another problem I have is that it seems geared for corporate websites, but I know it is not. Perhaps next edition can have more small, not-for-profit website reviews so that it's easier for readers to convince their bosses that this applies to all, not just Ebay.
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