Prioritizing Web Usability
Making your web site as user friendly as possible is something that most people would like to achieve but how do you know what your visitors will and wont understand? The authors of this book have been studying web users over many years and so this book provides much useful information on the way that people use web sites. A must have book for anyone serious about web site usability.
My Rating: 
Pros
- Lots of web page illustrations so you can see what they are talking about
- Real results form real web usability studies using actual web sites
- Discusses how usability issues can vary for certain types of web sites
- Prioritizes usability issues so that you can concentrate on applying the most important ones first
- Illustrates just how different real usage of web sites differes from that perceived by the page authors
Cons
- Concentrates on adult visitors so may not be relevant if your site is aimed at children or teens
Description
- First Edition: Copyright 2006
- 406 page paperback
- Published by New Riders / Peachpit Press
- ISBN 0-321-35031-6
- Authors Jacob Neilsen and Hoa Loranger
Review
Most people create web pages that are intended for other people to use. How well those other people will be able to use the web site that you create will depend on how easy that you make it for those other people to actually use. Often their knowledge of both how they expect web pages to work and what they know about the subject matter covered on your site will mean that their expectations of how your site ought to work will differ significantly from your own.
The authors of this book have done extensive research of web page usability over an extended period of time using real people with varying computer experience and giving them real tasks to perform using real web sites. As a result of their research they have accumulated vast quantities of information on how a typical web user interacts with web sites. This book is not an extensive resource outlining the results of this extensive rersearch but instead concentrates on those usability issues that the authors consider to be of the greatest importance in determining the usability or otherwise of a web site.
Not surprisingly the typical web user perceives the web differently from web authors. What is surprising is just how much differently this perception actually is. You may end up feeling really frustrated at how user unfriendly some of the features that you have on your site actually are and how much work you will need to undertake to make your site more user friendly but just think how much worse off you would be without having a book like this one to help you work out what your visitors will expect.
If you have any interest at all in helping the people who visit your site to achieve their objectives in having decided to visit then this book is one that you will definitely want to add to your collection.
More Information from the Publisher
