Web design

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes

=================

The Top Ten New Mistakes of Web Design

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox 5/30/99


The "top ten" design mistakes I identified in 1996 are still bad for
Web usability and are still found on many websites. So in that sense,
not much has changed over the last three years. 

But unfortunately new Web technology and new applications for the Web
have introduced an entirely new class of mistakes. Here are the ten
worst. 

1. Breaking or Slowing Down the Back Button

The Back button is the lifeline of the Web user and the second-most
used navigation feature (after following hypertext links). Users
happily know that they can try anything on the Web and always be saved
by a click or two on Back to return them to familiar territory. 

Except, of course, for those sites that break Back by committing one
of these design sins: 

...opening a new browser window (see mistake #2)

...using an immediate redirect: every time the user clicks Back, the
browser returns to a page that bounces the user forward to the
undesired location

...prevents caching such that the Back navigation requires a fresh
trip to the server; all hypertext navigation should be sub-second and
this goes double for backtracking 

2. Opening New Browser Windows

Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person
who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer's carpet.
Don't pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly
since current operating systems have miserable window management). If
I want a new window, I will open it myself! 

Designers open new browser windows on the theory that it keeps users
on their site. But even disregarding the user-hostile message implied
in taking over the user's machine, the strategy is self-defeating
since it disables the Back button which is the normal way users return
to previous sites. Users often don't notice that a new window has
opened, especially if they are using a small monitor where the windows
are maximized to fill up the screen. So a user who tries to return to
the origin will be confused by a grayed out Back button. 

3. Non-Standard Use of GUI Widgets

Consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles: when
things always behave the same, users don't have to worry about what
will happen. Instead, they know what will happen based on earlier
experience. Every time you release an apple over Sir Isaac Newton, it
will drop on his head. That's good. 

The more users' expectations prove right, the more they will feel in
control of the system and the more they will like it. And the more the
system breaks users' expectations, the more they will feel insecure.
Oops, maybe if I let go of this apple, it will turn into a tomato and
jump a mile into the sky. 

Interaction consistency is an additional reason it's wrong to open new
browser windows: the standard result of clicking a link is that the
destination page replaces the origination page in the same browser
window. Anything else is a violation of the users' expectations and
makes them feel insecure in their mastery of the Web. 

Currently, the worst consistency violations on the Web are found in
the use of GUI widgets such as radio buttons and checkboxes. The
appropriate behavior of these design elements are defined in the
Windows UI standard, the Macintosh UI standard, and the Java UI
standard. Which of these standards to follow depends on the platform
used by the majority of your users (good bet: Windows), but it hardly
matters for the most basic widgets since all the standards have
close-to-identical rules. 

For example, the rules for radio buttons state that they are used to
select one among a set of options but that the choice of options does
not take effect until the user has confirmed the choice by clicking an
OK button. Unfortunately, I have seen many websites where radio
buttons are used as action buttons that have an immediate result when
clicked. Such wanton deviations from accepted interface standards make
the Web harder to use. 

4. Lack of Biographies

My first Web studies in 1994 showed that users want to know the people
behind information on the Web. In particular, biographies and
photographs of the authors help make the Web a less impersonal place
and increase trust. Personality and point-of-view often wins over
anonymous bits coming over the wire. 

Yet many sites still don't use columnists and avoid by-lines on their
articles. Even sites with by-lines often forget the link to the
author's biography and a way for the user to find other articles by
the same author. 

It is particularly bad when a by-line is made into a mailto: link
instead of a link to the author's biography. Two reasons: 

...it is much more common for a reader to want to know more about an
author (including finding the writer's other articles) than it is for
the reader to want to contact the author - sure, contact info is
often a good part of the biography, but it should not be the primary
or only piece of data about the author

...it breaks the conventions of the Web when clicking on blue
underlined text spawns an email message instead of activating a
hypertext link to a new page; such inconsistency reduces usability by
making the Web less predictable 

5. Lack of Archives

Old information is often good information and can be useful to
readers. Even when new information is more valuable than old
information, there is almost always some value to the old stuff, and
it is very cheap to keep it online. I estimate that having archives
may add about 10% to the cost of running a site but increase its
usefulness by about 50%. 

Archives are also necessary as the only way to eliminate linkrot and
thus encourage other sites to link to you. 

6. Moving Pages to New URLs

Anytime a page moves, you break any incoming links from other sites.
Why hurt the people who send you free customer referrals? 

7. Headlines That Make No Sense Out of Context

Headlines and other microcontent must be written very differently
for the Web than for old media: they are actionable items that serve
as UI elements and should help users navigate. 

Headlines are often removed from the context of the full page and
used in tables of content (e.g., home pages or category pages) and in
search engine results. In either case the writing needs to be very
plain and meet two goals: 

...tell users what's at the other end of the link with no guesswork
required 

...protect users from following the link if they would not be
interested in the destination page (so no teasers - they may work
once or twice to drive up traffic, but in the long run they will
make users abandon the site and reduce its credibility) 

8. Jumping at the Latest Internet Buzzword

The web is awash in money and people who proclaim to have found the
way to salvation for all the sites that continue to lose money. 

Push, community, chat, free email, 3D sitemaps, auctions - you know
the drill. 

But there is no magic bullet. Most Internet buzzwords have some
substance and might bring small benefits to those few websites that
can use them appropriately. Most of the time, most websites will be
hurt by implementing the latest buzzword. The opportunity cost is
high from focusing attention on a fad instead of spending the time,
money, and management bandwidth on improving basic customer service
and usability. 

There will be a new buzzword next month. Count on it. But don't jump
at it just because Jupiter writes a report about it. 

9. Slow Server Response Times

Slow response times are the worst offender against Web usability: in
my survey of the original "top-ten" mistakes, major sites had a
truly horrifying 84% violation score with respect to the response
time rule.

Bloated graphic design was the original offender in the response
time area. Some sites still have too many graphics or too big
graphics; or they use applets where plain or Dynamic HTML would have
done the trick. So I am not giving up my crusade to minimize download
times. 

The growth in web-based applications, e-commerce, and personalization
often means that each page view must be computed on the fly. As a
result, the experienced delay in loading the page is determined not
simply by the download delay (bad as it is) but also by the server
performance. Sometimes building a page also involves connections to
back-end mainframes or database servers, slowing down the process even
further. 

Users don't care why response times are slow. All they know is that
the site doesn't offer good service: slow response times often
translate directly into a reduced level of trust and they always cause
a loss of traffic as users take their business elsewhere. So invest in
a fast server and get a performance expert to review your system
architecture and code quality to optimize response times. 

10. Anything That Looks Like Advertising

Selective attention is very powerful, and Web users have learned to
stop paying attention to any ads that get in the way of their
goal-driven navigation. That's why click-through rates are being cut
in half every year and why Web advertisements don't work. 

Unfortunately, users also ignore legitimate design elements that look
like prevalent forms of advertising. After all, when you ignore
something, you don't study it in detail to find out what it is. 

Therefore, it is best to avoid any designs that look like
advertisements. The exact implications of this guideline will vary
with new forms of ads; currently follow these rules: 

...banner blindness means that users never fixate their eyes on
anything that looks like a banner ad due to shape or position on the
page

...animation avoidance makes users ignore areas with blinking or
flashing text or other aggressive animations 

...pop-up purges mean that users close pop-up windoids before they
have even fully rendered; sometimes with great viciousness (a sort of
getting-back-at-Geocities triumph). I don't want to ban pop-ups
completely since they can sometimes be a productive part of an
interface, but I advise making sure that there is an alternative way
of using the site for users who never see the pop-ups. 





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