LabIUtil Home Page 7 Best Practices for Improving Your Website's Usability The Web Design Usability Series is supported by join.me, an easy way to instantly share your screen with anyone. join.me lets you collaborate on-the-fly, put your heads together super-fast and even just show off. Writing content for web users has its challenges. Chief among them is the ease with which your content is read and understood by your visitors (i.e. its readability). When your content is highly readable, your audience is able to quickly digest the information you share with them — a worthy goal to have for your website, whether you run a blog, an e-store or your company's domain. Below are a handful of dead-simple tips and techniques for enhancing the usability and readability of your website's content. These tips are based on research findings and suggestions by well-regarded usability experts such as Jakob Nielsen. This list is not exhaustive, and is meant merely to arm you with a few ideas that you can implement right away. General Goals of User-Friendly Web Content 1. 2. 3. 4.
10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines - Smashing Magazine Advertisement 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. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites. 1. A study by UX Matters found that the ideal position for labels in forms is above the fields. Tumblr 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 study. And now the baby is looking at the content.
Checklist básico de usabilidade - Pensar3W Soluções em Web! / Desenvolvimento de Web Sites / Assis Chateaubriand - PR Sexta, 15 Junho 2012 19:56 Acessibilidade Tempo de abertura do site é razoávelContraste entre texto e fundo é adequadoTamanho de fonte / espaçamento facilita a leituraFlash e add-ons são usados moderadamenteImagens possuem ALT tagsSite tem uma página de Erro 404 Identidade Logo do site está bem posicionadoTagline da empresa é claraPropósito do site é entendido em 5 segundosAcesso rápido a informação da empresaAcesso rápido a contato com a empresa Navegação Navegação principal é facilmente identificávelItens de navegação são claros e concisosQuantidade de botões e links é razoávelLogo do site é linkado à página inicialLinks são consistentes e fáceis de serem identificadosCaixa de busca é de fácil acesso Conteúdo Títulos são claros e descritivosConteúdo crítico está acima da dobraEstilos e cores são consistentesÊnfase (bold, etc) é usado de forma moderada e adequadaAnúncios e pop-ups são não obstrutivosTexto é conciso e explicativoURLs são amigáveisTítulos HTML são explicativos
How to Optimize Your Headlines for Google and Humans Jonathan Rick is a director at Levick Strategic Communications. He contributes to Levick’s Bulletproof Blog. Follow him @jrick. Why do search engines always rank certain websites so highly? Sure, their content might be great, but their search engine optimization is definitely awesome. Indeed, for many sites, the search-engine spiders that crawl the web deliver a third or more of their traffic. So crafting key parts of a page, like a headline, is critical. In protest, writers for publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Atlantic each took turns slugging the SEO punching bag. In other words, algorithms don’t appreciate wit, irony, humor, or style. That, however, doesn't mean your headlines have to be stale. Bad Don't write the same headline for both the article and the page. In the examples below, keywords pertaining to the subject of each article are, well, nowhere. Time Article Title: "Beach Force One"Page Title: Beach Force One The Atlantic Vanity Fair Good Gawker
25-point Website Usability Checklist I've been thinking a lot lately about my process. Experience is a powerful thing, but it's rare that we really sit down and try to map out what we know. A while back, as part of my 5-point Website Clinic, I developed a 25-point website usability checklist - a way to create some method out of my madness and make sure that I don't forget anything critical when I'm working with a new client. Even though it's part of one of my paid offerings, I've decided to share this checklist. Basic Overview The list is split into 4 roughly equal sections, (I) Accessibility, (II) Identity, (III) Navigation, and (IV) Content. Section I. This section contains not only traditional accessibility issues, but anything that might keep a visitor from being able to access the information on a website. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Section II. A key question when someone first comes to your site is "Who are you?" 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Section III. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. Section IV. You've heard it before - Content is king. 18.
Site oferece algoritmos prontos para qualquer um usar em sua aplicação Um bom algoritmo pode ser a diferença entre uma aplicação de sucesso e um completo fracasso. Sabendo disso, uma dupla de desenvolvedores americanos lançou o Algorithmia, um mercado aberto de algoritmos que podem ser usados por qualquer um. Depois de cadastrado, você pode buscar por algoritmos ou visualizar a lista dos mais populares. Ali há, por exemplo, um algoritmo que analisa blocos de textos, resumindo as informações mais importantes em uma versão reduzida. Um outro faz análises de sentimentos de postagens, concluindo se elas possuem conotação positiva ou negativa. Todos operam na infraestrutura do próprio Algorithmia, e o desenvolvedor precisa apenas instalar em seu código um script que fará as requisições aos servidores do site. Esse mesmo sistema é utilizado para cobrar pelo uso dos algoritmos. A plataforma possui três planos mensais com créditos para serem utilizados no pagamento desses acessos. Saiba mais sobre o Algorithmia no site do projeto.
Why many college newspaper websites are ugly / WP Journo: WordPress & Journalism College student newspaper adviser Michael Koretzky had a post over at The Huffington Post today that turned me into a troll. I commented. In fact, I commented harshly. Why? Koretzky’s post, headlined “College Journalists Are Good at Consuming Multimedia but Bad at Making It. It all starts with Koretzky explaining that he judged a college newspaper website competition and was aghast at how bad all the entries were. But he’s wrong. Advisers, journalism professors and programs In fact, one of the top reasons why college media websites (and even multimedia pieces like web videos, podcasts and photos with audio) are weak is because of advisers and journalism professors just like Koretzky. This has never been more apparent to me than when I attended the College Media Advisers Spring Convention in New York City. If you think about it, though, it makes sense. The cost of print Most college newspapers make very little, if any, revenue off of their web presence. Campus presence The platforms
10 Usability Tips Based on Research Studies We hear plenty usability tips and techniques from an incalculable number of sources. Many of the ones we take seriously have sound logic, but it’s even more validating when we find actual data and reports to back up their theories and conjectures. This article discusses usability findings of research results such as eye-tracking studies, reports, analytics, and usability surveys pertaining to website usability and improvements. You’ll discover that many of these usability tips will be common sense but are further supported with numbers; however, some might surprise you and change your outlook on your current design processes. 1. Forget the "Three-Click Rule" The idea that users will get frustrated if they have to click more than three times to find a piece of content on your website has been around for ages. Logically, it makes sense. But why the arbitrary three-click limit? In fact, most users won’t give up just because they’ve hit some magical number. Source: User Interface Engineering
Complete Web Application Testing Checklist This post in contributed by Pradeep Agya. Pradeep is a QA Lead in a leading MNC While testing the web applications, one should consider the below mentioned checklist. The below mentioned checklist is almost applicable for all types of web applications depending on the business requirements. The web application checklist consists of: - Usability Testing Functional Testing Compatibility Testing Database Testing Security Testing Performance Testing Now let's look each checklist in detail: Usability Testing What is Usability Testing? Usability testing is nothing but the User-friendliness check. What is the purpose or Goal of Usability testing? A Usability test establishes the ease of use and effectiveness of a product using a standard Usability test practices. Usability Test Scenarios: Web page content should be correct without any spelling or grammatical errors All fonts should be same as per the requirements. Functional Testing: What is Functional Testing? Functional Test Scenarios: