10 Tools to Improve Your Site’s Usability on a Low Budget Testing the usability of your site is one of the smartest things you can do. Usability involves making a website’s interface easier to use and simpler to understand, so that the user’s experience is as enjoyable as possible. The more usable a site is, the more satisfying it will be to interact with it — and happy visitors translate into happy customers. Ideas about what makes for the best website design don’t always translate perfectly when put into practice. In this article, we’ll review 10 tools that you can use to improve your website’s usability even if you’re on a low budget. As designers and developers, we have a natural bias towards the way our own products function: we built them, so we know exactly how they work. Our visitors, however, don’t have this advantage. Usability testing allows you to discover many ways in which your site can be improved. How much testing should I do? Usability testing may sound daunting, but in reality, a small investment can yield large gains. 1. 2. 3.
In the Woods - Common Mistakes in Web Design Many rejected templates here on Themeforest suffer from the same few common mistakes: typography (font, line-height, letter-spacing, color), alignment (grid), and spacing (padding). In this tutorial, we are going to take a closer look at how to avoid these common errors. Typography You must understand how fonts affect the design of a page, and your readers. Unfortunately, you are restricted to using only a few web safe fonts that are available on most operating systems. Don’t mix too many fonts Choose one font for headings, and another for the body. Don’t mix sans with serif fonts Ok, now this is not a rule; but for the beginners, I strongly suggest not to do so. Choosing the right font size We usually determine our font size with CSS by either using percentages, ems, or pixels. Adjusting the line-height The line-height property sets the distance between lines. Choosing the right font color The main thing to watch here is that your text is readable enough on any background that’s set.
So you wanna be a user experience designer — Step 1: Resources - Pleasure and Pain by Whitney Hess Want to pursue a career in UX, but don’t know where to start? When you Learn the Ropes with Whitney Hess, you get in-depth training on principles, process, methods and techniques you need to excel in User Experience. Learn more > Pretty much every single day I get a tweet, email, or in person request for information on how to get started in the field of user experience. I’ve recently had a few people reach out to me even asking me to mentor them throughout the process. Given that I often find myself repeating the same answers over and over again, I decided to put all of my resources in a single blog post so that folks could easily access a consolidated version of my advice. So you wanna be a user experience designer? The best way to learn a new language is to go to a country where it’s spoken and immerse yourself in the confusion. If you’re interested in getting to know more about user experience, I recommend doing the same. …as well as any other topics that come up along the way. UX Books
456 Berea street 247 web usability guidelines Web usability guidelines Home page usability: 20 guidelines to evaluate the usability of home pages. Task orientation: 44 guidelines to evaluate how well a web site supports the users tasks. Navigation and IA: 29 guidelines to evaluate navigation and information architecture. Forms and data entry: 23 guidelines to evaluate forms and data entry. Download an Excel workbook containing all 247 web usability guidelines You can also download translated versions of this checklist (in French, Spanish and Russian). How to use these guidelines Work through each of the guidelines in each list and mark your site as either conforming or not conforming to the guideline. Remember that all guidelines are context specific. The guidelines are purposefully expressed as positive statements, so that when you feed the results back to the design team you can identify some strengths of the design before you launch into the problems. And remember that guidelines can get you only so far. About the author Dr.
10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines « Smashing Magazine Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. 1. A study by UX Matters1 found that the ideal position for labels in forms is above the fields. 2Tumblr3 features a simple and elegant sign-up form that adheres to UX Matter’s recommendation. Positioning labels on the left also poses another problem: do you left-align or right-align the labels? 2. People instinctively notice other people right away when they come into view. Eye-tracking heat map of a baby looking directly at us, from the UsableWorld study4. And now the baby is looking at the content. Here’s an eye-tracking study5 that demonstrates this. 3. 4. 12Basecamp13 makes great use of space. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
15 Valuable Usability PDFs You Never Heard Of Here’s a list of 15 valuable Usability Papers in PDF form that you might not have heard of, but should know and can use: I thought I’d list a few helpful papers I use from time to time when going about my usability work. Some of these you may have heard of, some not. I think you’ll find these very helpful from time to time. This list is not meant to be comprehensive, rather, it’s the list of the most thumb-worn papers I leaf through when needed. They are all free, and are publicly available. If you have a special usability PDF you find extremely helpful and it’s not listed here please do share them in the Comments (go ahead, share them right now), that way we can all grow smarter about usability together! I hope you find these helpful! Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines by the U.S. Usability.gov should be in any usability fan’s list. How well do web site usability questionnaires apply to the assessment of websites? Why Johnny Can’t Encrypt by Whitten and Tygar (1999) Google+
69 Free (or low cost) Tools to Improve Your Website Five Simple but Essential Web Usability Tips The web has become a part of our lives. Folks from all walks of life, from upscale parts of New York to dirt road villages you probably will never hear of in Burundi, are all a part of what we call "the internet". The reasons they use the web is highly varied: it could be to search for news articles, directions to the nearest pub, the winter/fall clothing trends, post-grad research, or shopping for a handbag, the list is endless. It could be anyone too. It’d be impossible to try to classify web users in any particular demographic range. On top of the web’s ubiquity, the web has gotten to an interactive all time high. And it’s only going to get better: we are seeing a myriad of emerging web apps and website trends that are revolutionizing the way we use and obtain information on the web. With this concept in mind, usability, how effortless it is to interact and use your website, is critical to its success. 1. A basic site feature nowadays is a search feature. 2. 3. 4. 5. Related Content
24 UX Articles to Start 2010 We’ve just begun a year and already I have been overwhelmed with the amazing UX articles, websites, and projects that have cropped up over the past few weeks. It is exciting to see the growth in this upcoming field. Today we’ve gathered some of the best of the UX-related web that we’ve found. What’s Next in Web Design? This post is a great outline of what we may expect to come in 2010’s web design trends. What Am I Saying Yes To? More and more I am beginning to understand the role of copy in user experience. Spending Quality Time with Your Search Log Oh, something we all need to start out the new year doing. A Basic Usability Test on Ten Phones In this article Peter-Paul Koch, mobile platform strategist, conducted a simple usability test on some popular cell phones. The Web Designer’s Guide to User Experience So if you’ve never read a post on UX Booth then this post is for you, heh. Articles by Topic: Information Architecture Guide to Low-cost Usability Tools Why Microcopy Matters