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10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

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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. Form Labels Work Best Above The Field

A study by UX Matters found that the ideal position for labels in forms is above the fields. On many forms, labels are put to the left of the fields, creating a two-column layout; while this looks good, it’s not the easiest layout to use. Why is that? Because forms are generally vertically oriented; i.e. users fill the form from top to bottom. Users scan the form downwards as they go along. And following the label to the field below is easier than finding the field to the right of the label.

Tumblr in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
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? Left-aligning makes the form scannable but disconnects the labels from the fields, making it difficult to see which label applies to which field. Right-aligning does the reverses: it makes for a good-looking but less scannable form. Labels above fields work best in most circumstances. The study also found that labels should not be bold, although this recommendation is not conclusive.

2. Users Focus On Faces

People instinctively notice other people right away when they come into view. On Web pages, we tend to focus on people’s faces and eyes, which gives marketers a good technique for attracting attention. But our attraction to people’s faces and eyes is only the beginning; it turns out we actually glance in the direction the person in the image is looking in.

Eyes1 in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
Eye-tracking heat map of a baby looking directly at us, from the UsableWorld study.

Eyes2 in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
And now the baby is looking at the content. Notice the increase in people looking at the headline and text.

Here’s an eye-tracking study that demonstrates this. We’re instinctively drawn to faces, but if that face is looking somewhere other than at us, we’ll also look in that direction. Take advantage of this phenomenon by drawing your users’ attention to the most important parts of your page or ad.

3. Quality Of Design Is An Indicator Of Credibility

Various studies have been conducted to find out just what influences people’s perception of a website’s credibility:

Fever in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
We don’t know if Fever app is any good, but the sleek user interface and website make a great first impression.

One interesting finding of these studies is that users really do judge a book by its cover… or rather, a website by its design. Elements such as layout, consistency, typography, color and style all affect how users perceive your website and what kind of image you project. Your website should project not only a good image but also the right one for your audience.

Other factors that influence credibility are: the quality of the website’s content, amount of errors, rate of updates, ease of use and trustworthiness of authors.

4. Most Users Do Not Scroll

Jakob Nielsen’s study on how much users scroll (in Prioritizing Web Usability) revealed that only 23% of visitors scroll on their first visit to a website. This means that 77% of visitors won’t scroll; they’ll just view the content above the fold (i.e. the area of the page that is visible on the screen without scrolling down). What’s more, the percentage of users who scroll decreases with subsequent visits, with only 16% scrolling on their second visit. This data highlights just how important it is to place your key content on a prominent position, especially on landing pages.

This doesn’t mean you should cram everything in the upper area of the page, just that you should make the best use of that area. Crowding it with content will just make the content inaccessible; when the user sees too much information, they don’t know where to begin looking.

Basecamp in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
Basecamp makes great use of space. Above the fold (768 pixels high), it shows a large screenshot, tagline, value proposition, call to action, client list, videos and short feature list with images.

This is most important for the home page, where most new visitors will land. So provide the core essentials there:

  1. Name of the website,
  2. Value proposition of the website (i.e. what benefit users will get from using it),
  3. Navigation for the main sections of the website that are relevant to the user.

However, users’ habits have significantly changed since then. Recent studies prove that users are quite comfortable with scrolling and in some situations they are willing to scroll to the bottom of the page. Many users are more comfortable with scrolling than with a pagination, and for many users the most important information of the page isn’t necessarily placed “above the fold” (which is because of the variety of available display resolutions a quite outdated, deprecated term). So it is a good idea to divide your layout into sections for easy scanning, separating them with a lot of white space.

For further information please take a look at the articles Unfolding the fold (Clicktale), Paging VS Scrolling (Wichita University – SURL), Blasting the Myth of the Fold (Boxes and Arrows). (thanks, Fred Leuck).

5. Blue Is The Best Color For Links

While giving your website a unique design is great, when it comes to usability, doing what everyone else is doing is best. Follow conventions, because when people visit a new website, the first place they look for things are in the places where they found them on most other websites; they tap into their experience to make sense of this new content. This is known as usage patterns. People expect certain things to be the same, such as link colors, the location of the website’s logo, the behavior of tabbed navigation and so on.

Google2 in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
Google keeps all links on its websites blue for a reason: the color is familiar to most users, which makes it easy to locate.

What color should your links be? The first consideration is contrast: links have to be dark (or light) enough to contrast with the background color. Secondly, they should stand out from the color of the rest of the text; so, no black links with black text. And finally, research shows (Van Schaik and Ling) that if usability if your priority, sticking to blue for links is best. The browser’s default link color is blue, so people expect it. Choosing a different color is by no means a problem, but it may affect the speed with which users find it.

6. The Ideal Search Box Is 27-Characters Wide

What’s the ideal width of a search box? Is there such a thing? Jakob Nielsen performed a usability study on the length of search queries in website search boxes (Prioritizing Web Usability). It turns out that most of today’s search boxes are too short. The problem with short boxes is that even though you can type out a long query, only a portion of the text will be visible at a time, making it difficult to review or edit what you’ve typed.

The study found that the average search box is 18-characters wide. The data showed that 27% of queries were too long to fit into it. Extending the box to 27 characters would accommodate 90% of queries. Remember, you can set widths using ems, not just pixels and points. One em is the width and height of one “m” character (using whatever font size a website is set to). So, use this measure to scale the width of the text input field to 27-characters wide.

Google in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
Google’s search box is wide enough to accommodate long sentences.

Apple in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
Apple’s search box is a little too short, cutting off the query, “Microsoft Office 2008.”

In general, search boxes are better too wide than too short, so that users can quickly review, verify and submit the query. This guideline is very simple but unfortunately too often dismissed or ignored. Some padding in the input field can also improve the design and user experience.

7. White Space Improves Comprehension

Most designers know the value of white space, which is the empty space between paragraphs, pictures, buttons and other items on the page. White space de-clutters a page by giving items room to breathe. We can also group items together by decreasing the space between them and increasing the space between them and other items on the page. This is important for showing relationships between items (e.g. showing that this button applies to this set of items) and building a hierarchy of elements on the page.

Netsetter in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
Notice the big content margin, padding and paragraph spacing on The Netsetter. All that space makes the content easy and comfortable to read.

White space also makes content more readable. A study (Lin, 2004) found that good use of white space between paragraphs and in the left and right margins increases comprehension by almost 20%. Readers find it easier to focus on and process generously spaced content.

In fact, according to Chaperro, Shaikh and Baker, the layout on a Web page (including white space, headers, indentation and figures) may not measurably influence performance but does influence user satisfaction and experience.

8. Effective User Testing Doesn’t Have To Be Extensive

Jakob Nielsen’s study on the ideal number of test subjects in usability tests found that tests with just five users would reveal about 85% of all problems with your website, whereas 15 users would find pretty much all problems.

Usertests in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
Source: Jakob Nielsen’s AlertBox

The biggest issues are usually discovered by the first one or two users, and the following testers confirm these issues and discover the remaining minor issues. Only two test users would likely find half the problems on your website. This means that testing doesn’t have to be extensive or expensive to yield good results. The biggest gains are achieved when going from 0 test users to 1, so don’t be afraid of doing too little: any testing is better than none.

9. Informative Product Pages Help You Stand Out

If your website has product pages, people shopping online will definitely look through them. But many product pages lack sufficient information, even for visitors doing a quick scan. This is a serious problem, because product information helps people make purchasing decision. Research shows that poor product information accounts for around 8% of usability problems and even 10% of user failure (i.e. the user gives up and leaves the website) (Prioritizing Web Usability).

Ipod in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
Apple provides separate “Tech Specs” pages for its products, which keeps complicated details away from the simpler marketing pages, yet provides easy access when they’re needed.

Provide detailed information about your products, but don’t fall into the trap of bombarding users with too much text. Make the information easy to digest. Make the page scannable by breaking up the text into smaller segments and using plenty of sub-headings. Add plenty of images for your products, and use the right language: don’t use jargon that your visitors might not understand.

10. Most Users Are Blind To Advertising

Jakob Nielsen reports in his AlertBox entry that most users are essentially blind to ad banners. If they’re looking for a snippet of information on a page or are engrossed in content, they won’t be distracted by the ads on the side.

The implication of this is not only that users will avoid ads but that they’ll avoid anything that looks like an ad, even if it’s not an ad. Some heavily styled navigation items may look like banners, so be careful with these elements.

Flashden in 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
The square banners on the left sidebar of FlashDen are actually not ads: they’re content links. They do look uncomfortably close to ad banners and so may be overlooked by some users.

That said, ads that look like content will get people looking and clicking. This may generate more ad revenue but comes at the cost of your users’ trust, as they click on things they thought were genuine content. Before you go down that path, consider the trade-off: short-term revenue versus long-term trust.

Bonus: Findings From Our Case-Studies

In recent years, Smashing Magazine’s editorial team has conducted a number of case studies in an attempt to identify common design solutions and practices. So far, we have analyzed Web forms, blogs, typography and portfolios; and more case studies will be published next month. We have found some interesting patterns that could serve as guidelines for your next design.

Here, we’ll review some of the practices and design patterns that we discovered in our case studies in this brief, compact overview, for your convenience.

According to our typography study:

  • Line height (in pixels) ÷ body copy font size (in pixels) = 1.48
    1.5 is commonly recommended in classic typographic books, so our study backs up this rule of thumb. Very few websites use anything less than this. And the number of websites that go over 1.48 decreases as you get further from this value.
  • Line length (pixels) ÷ line height (pixels) = 27.8
    The average line length is 538.64 pixels (excluding margins and padding), which is pretty large considering that many websites still have body copy that is 12 to 13 pixels in font size.
  • Space between paragraphs (pixels) ÷ line height (pixels) = 0.754
    It turns out that paragraph spacing (i.e. the space between the last line of one paragraph and the first line of the next) rarely equals the leading (which would be the main characteristic of perfect vertical rhythm). More often, paragraph spacing is just 75% of paragraph leading. The reason may be that leading usually includes the space taken up by descenders; and because most characters do not have descenders, additional white space is created under the line.
  • Optimal number of characters per line is 55 to 75
    According to classic typographic books, the optimal number of characters per line is between 55 and 75, but between 75 and 85 characters per line is more popular in practice.

According to our blog design study:

  • Layouts usually have a fixed width (pixel-based) (92%) and are usually centered (94%). The width of fixed layouts varies between 951 and 1000 pixels (56%).
  • The home page shows excerpts of 10 to 20 posts (62%).
  • 58% of a website’s overall layout is used to display the main content.

According to our Web form design study:

  • The registration link is titled “sign up” (40%) and is placed in the upper-right corner.
  • Sign-up forms have simple layouts, to avoid distracting users (61%).
  • Titles of input fields are bolded (62%), and fields are vertically arranged more than they are horizontally arranged (86%).
  • Designers tend to include few mandatory fields and few optional fields.
  • Email confirmation is not given (82%), but password confirmation is (72%).
  • The “Submit” button is either left-aligned (56%) or centered (26%).

According to our portfolio design study:

  • 89% of layouts are horizontally centered, and most of them have a large horizontal navigation menu.
  • 47.2% of portfolios have a client page, and 67.2% have some form of standalone services page.
  • 63.6% have a detailed page for every project, including case studies, testimonials, slideshows with screenshots, drafts and sketches.
  • Contact pages contain driving directions, phone number, email address, postal address, vCard and online form,

Other Resources

Have any thoughts on what we’ve covered, or know of other useful usability findings? Please leave a comment below. (al)

Dmitry Fadeyev

Dmitry Fadeyev is the founder of the Usability Post blog, where you can read his thoughts on good design and usability.

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  1. 1
    Art
    September 24th, 2009 12:27 am

    Fabulous. Thanks!

    Reply
  2. 2
    TimHolmesDesign
    September 24th, 2009 12:29 am

    Really nice article and very useful, some of the ideas I will look into and implement

    Cheers SM

    Reply
  3. 3
    Cristian Eslava
    September 24th, 2009 12:31 am

    Just great post and very useful.

    One quetsion:
    Since most users don´t scroll I wonder why there aren´t more liquid layouts…

    Best regards

    Reply
  4. 4
    Jerome (SpeedAirMan)
    September 24th, 2009 12:35 am

    Nothing really new, but still really interesting !

    Always useful to remember those usability guidelines. Thank you for the article !

    Reply
  5. 5
    Retheesh
    September 24th, 2009 12:58 am

    really helpful…thank u guys

    Reply
  6. 6
    Joe
    September 24th, 2009 12:59 am

    Quality article, really useful thanx alot will deffo bookmark!!

    Reply
  7. 7
    Petter
    September 24th, 2009 1:15 am

    The UX matters article Label Placement in Forms is from 2006. Isn’t there another updated study?

    Reply
  8. 8
    Thinklikeauser
    September 24th, 2009 1:18 am

    Found this when *everyone* was twittering about it :)

    Nice article. I like the Bonus part where you’ve shown how to apply real numbers to UI design – I find those sort of things really help to justify why you’ve picked the layout you have. It stops it looking like a consultant’s personal opinion…it’s a formula to follow that will be apparent on successful sites too – great :) I shall add that to my notes ….

    Reply
  9. 9
    Philip Wallage
    September 24th, 2009 1:20 am

    Holy shit this is helpfull! I’ll sure bookmark this and use it as reference.

    Reply
  10. 10
    Can Berkol
    September 24th, 2009 1:23 am

    Great article. Thanks.

    Reply
  11. 11
    Mike Riley
    September 24th, 2009 1:23 am

    Thanks for this! It’s very well written and comprehensive, I’m a regular reader of alertbox but there is too much content there for me to recommend others to read it all. These are quick tips I can send to people I work with, just scanning down the page and reading the titles is informative!

    Usability is easy when you put it like that :)

    Reply
  12. 12
    Regnard Raquedan
    September 24th, 2009 1:23 am

    This is a very useful post. Everyone in web design should definitely take a look.

    Reply
  13. 13
    Bleyder
    September 24th, 2009 1:32 am

    Dmitry, you’re the best. Great content and useful information in your articles!

    Reply
  14. 14
    Alex Craven
    September 24th, 2009 1:36 am

    Hmm 77% of users dotn scroll is from research published in 2000..!!!

    habits have changed, also the example shown has a clear line accross the page where the fold woudl occur, if you want your users to scroll you need to provide visual (i.e. vertical) prompts that more content lies further down so text / images that spans the ‘fold’ or other graphical cues.

    I’ve wathced many eyetracking sessions and more often than not users do scroll.

    otherwise a great post

    Reply
  15. 15
    Ivo Bosma
    September 24th, 2009 1:45 am

    Nice overview of some really important findings and guidelines. Concerning the studies: it can be dangerous to take every result for granted from a study.Nice article though!

    Reply
  16. 16
    Ajay
    September 24th, 2009 1:46 am

    Neatly said… thanks

    Reply
  17. 17
    Mike Kingscott
    September 24th, 2009 1:49 am

    Hmmm, good article, but compare the first item (Form Labels Work Best…) on a long form (15 – 20+ items) with Users Do Not Scroll :-s

    Still, a darn good read :-)

    Reply
  18. 18
    fabiodipa
    September 24th, 2009 1:52 am

    Great! This is really helpful for the develop of my own site. So I’ve a lot to do.. In my test page i’m trying to apply your suggestions…

    Reply
  19. 19
    John Skinner
    September 24th, 2009 2:11 am

    The thinking represented here about scrolling and the fold is a bit outdated and somewhat misleading.

    The data shows that users will readily scroll, and that rather than getting hung up on the idea of a fold (which in any case will vary widely according to the user), designers should concentrate on producing a clear hierarchy of information supported by a usable and logical navigation.

    The term ‘fold’ is a throwback to newspaper layout – and we all know where they’re heading.

    Reply
  20. 20
    Fred Leuck
    September 24th, 2009 2:16 am

    Thank you for this useful article
    “Most Users Do Not Scroll” ???
    Nowadays, it’s not absolutely true !! Recent studies show just the opposite…
    Check these: Unfolding the fold (Clicktale), Paging VS Scrolling (Wichita University – SURL), Blasting the Myth of the Fold (Boxes and Arrows)

    Reply
  21. 21
    Martin
    September 24th, 2009 2:18 am

    I see interesting trend of reinventing the “hot water” from some time. The best practices are already written in the books (concerning typography) and yet web designers tend to:
    1. Completely ignore them, if ever read them
    2. Reinvent them – slowly and painfully

    I think it is time for web design to be taken much more serious by users, developers and designers. This is not the simple HTML that was 10 years ago.

    Reply
  22. 22
    Mel
    September 24th, 2009 2:20 am

    Very cool article, but I agree with Fred and John. Users do scroll. When publishing usability testing, especially as related to technology, I think the cut-off needs to be 3 years or so before it’s no longer relevant. People HATED the iphone keyboard initially, now I seldom read any complaints about it. Point being, people are adapting to technology at an exponential rate.

    Reply
  23. 23
    DKumar M.
    September 24th, 2009 2:25 am

    Nice overview on usability findings…. thanks for sharing. Anyway… last link in Other Resources called “Web form design guidelines: an eye-tracking study” leads to “Not found” page.

    Reply
  24. 24
    Sam Benson
    September 24th, 2009 2:29 am

    Really interesting read – i’m thinking about making a simple calculator to do all of the math mentioned above.

    Reply
  25. 25
    Alia Karibskaya
    September 24th, 2009 2:45 am

    Useful! Thanks!

    Reply
  26. 26
    charlene mcbride
    September 24th, 2009 2:51 am

    I disagree with the blanket statement that most users don’t scroll. I’ve found that users scroll when they want to scroll. Maybe the more accurate statement is most users don’t think they need to scroll.

    Reply
  27. 27
    pixeline
    September 24th, 2009 2:52 am

    No scrolling allowed? Not so true anymore, per Jakob Nielsen’s himself!

    http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9712a.html (”changes in web usability since 1994 – and that article dates back 1997 !!)

    Reply
  28. 28
    Riccardo
    September 24th, 2009 2:55 am

    Nice article Dmitry, thanks.

    Do you have any links for the two studies you mention under the white space section? (Lin and Chaperro, Shaikh and Baker.) I’d be interested to read them.

    Reply
  29. 29
    Adam
    September 24th, 2009 2:56 am

    Best article for a long time.

    Reply
  30. 30
    Imad Mouaddine
    September 24th, 2009 3:03 am

    I enjoyed this articles very informative!

    Reply
  31. 31
    Webstandard-Team
    September 24th, 2009 3:14 am

    “Most Users Do Not Scroll”? The majority of the a short poll on the Webstandardblog prefers scrolling, not a pagination. Therefore I can’t share this opinion.

    Reply
  32. 32
    Rols
    September 24th, 2009 3:16 am

    Other than the articles that Fred listed, does anyone know of any stats or findings that can provide info on the fact that all users do scroll now in opposed to the year 2000. It would really help.

    Great article!

    Reply
  33. 33
    Marlou
    September 24th, 2009 3:25 am

    Very interesting. Thanks alot!

    Reply
  34. 34
    Tschai (Aytemir.com)
    September 24th, 2009 3:25 am

    “Most Users Are Blind To Advertising”

    I’m working on this with my upcoming fan-tas-tic theme ;)

    Reply
  35. 35
    Amer ranki
    September 24th, 2009 3:42 am

    Nice articals!
    Thanks alot :)

    Reply
  36. 36
    Roie
    September 24th, 2009 3:43 am

    Excellent article, sadly most marketing dept. (in charge of he budget) knows nothing about this and will force unnecessary and wrong changes…

    Reply
  37. 37
    anny
    September 24th, 2009 3:50 am

    great article. Thanks heaps!

    Reply
  38. 38
    vicky
    September 24th, 2009 3:52 am

    A good article! back to basics

    Reply
  39. 39
    Diego Novaes
    September 24th, 2009 3:53 am

    thats just priceless, thank you!

    Reply
  40. 40
    Awesh
    September 24th, 2009 3:56 am

    not agree with “Form Labels Work Best Above The Field” this is against accessibility and it can increase page length.

    Reply
  41. 41
    Bob
    September 24th, 2009 4:05 am

    Very usefull, thanks a lot!

    Reply
  42. 42
    The Dude
    September 24th, 2009 4:16 am

    Great article! Have made a mountain of notes to drum into my head now, and alot more to look further into! Thanks SM :) Dugg, stumbled and tweeted!

    Reply
  43. 43
    Linda
    September 24th, 2009 4:18 am

    Jared Spool described a “5-second” test for a page with a very focused purpose (not home page), where you show the page for only 5 seconds and then ask the user what they remember. Fascinating.

    Reply
  44. 44
    Giancarlo
    September 24th, 2009 4:28 am

    Your site is great truly useful stuff on it as well like this article.
    keep it up

    Reply
  45. 45
    Micajah
    September 24th, 2009 4:39 am

    You guys don’t stop do you. Great piece after great piece!!.

    Reply
  46. 46
    Rob Edwards
    September 24th, 2009 4:43 am

    Great list.

    We’re currently doing some research on usability testing research it would be great if you could have a look and give some feedback – chance to win $300.

    Thanks.

    Reply
  47. 47
    Antonio Cosentino
    September 24th, 2009 4:44 am

    Great post, very useful!
    Thank you!

    Reply
  48. 48
    praveen
    September 24th, 2009 4:51 am

    awesome article!

    Reply
  49. 49
    Joop Vos
    September 24th, 2009 5:01 am

    Could anyone tell me that showing a (good!) image of a trainer on his website increases the credibility of this trainer or that it makes no difference.
    If someone did some research on this matter, please inform me. I would be very grateful!

    Reply
  50. 50
    Jason
    September 24th, 2009 5:04 am

    As others have already pointed out the information you presented regarding scrolling is outdated. The “studies” that were done regarding form labels are not statistically valid.

    I am not saying it’s all bad but I hope no one follows this advice blindly.

    Reply
  51. 51
    Jay August
    September 24th, 2009 5:10 am

    Already knew quite a few, but the baby face example and not scrolling visitors kinda blew me away. Must. Keep. In. Mind..

    Reply
  52. 52
    Kash
    September 24th, 2009 5:11 am

    I simply love this usability article! Great findings. It seems many long time web developers and web masters might have missed these points!. Cant wait to stumbled it!.. :)

    Reply
  53. 53
    James
    September 24th, 2009 5:16 am

    Best post in a long time!!!

    Reply
  54. 54
    Liam Potter
    September 24th, 2009 5:18 am

    If most people don’t scroll, how did everyone here post a comment? I’ve never, not once, seen someone confused by scrolling, no matter how young or old.

    Reply
  55. 55
    Alexander Polyakov
    September 24th, 2009 5:31 am

    Very helpful post. Especially hints about usable forms.

    Reply
  56. 56
    Sean
    September 24th, 2009 5:41 am

    Really need to update the scrolling recommendation. People do scroll, as pointed out in the links in comment 20. Perpetuating that myth that every important thing needs to be above the fold is only going to make designs more cluttered in the long run.

    Reply
  57. 57
    ed1nh0
    September 24th, 2009 5:51 am

    Amazing post! The best I’ve ever seen. Wonder if the smash’s design book (that I already pre-ordered) has this kind of approach…

    Reply
  58. 58
    Fred Leuck
    September 24th, 2009 5:58 am

    >> Sean
    Totally agree!
    I think that “Most Users Don’t Read Comments” could be true :)

    Reply
  59. 59
    Smashing Editorial
    September 24th, 2009 6:00 am

    Thank you for your comments! The article was updated.

    Reply
  60. 60
    Fred Leuck
    September 24th, 2009 6:02 am

    Yes ! Thanks

    Reply
  61. 61
    Rocco
    September 24th, 2009 6:25 am

    Users DO scroll
    Hmmm – who’s right now?

    Reply
  62. 62
    Klerdesign
    September 24th, 2009 6:37 am

    Very Good ! But so to be visible, is it necessary to be in top and on the left or top and on the right?

    Reply
  63. 63
    Tiffany
    September 24th, 2009 6:42 am

    Awesome Article! It was so informative and I will definitely save this info and keep it in mind when designing sites.

    Reply
  64. 64
    Craig Wann
    September 24th, 2009 7:00 am

    @Rocco Darn it! I was kind of excited about the “users don’t scroll” study. Now that I have read the study that you linked to, I don’t know what to believe!

    This is like the eggs are good for you vs. Eggs are bad for you debate. Every year or so a new study comes out contradicting the last studies findings.

    For now, I will take the authors advice and keep important content above the fold as much as possible.

    Reply
  65. 65
    Caroline Jarrett
    September 24th, 2009 7:01 am

    Before you follow the guideline about placement of labels in forms, read my article on usabilitynews.com: “Label Placement in Forms”.

    And remember that users don’t bail out of forms because they don’t like where the labels are placed – they bail out because they don’t like the questions they are being asked, because they consider the questions are intrusive, or because they don’t know the answers.

    best
    Caroline Jarrett
    Author: “Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability”

    Reply
  66. 66
    Will
    September 24th, 2009 7:18 am

    Yes, yes, yes! Great post. Good stuff indeed.

    Reply
  67. 67
    Brett
    September 24th, 2009 7:21 am

    Good article! It’s always nice to see current standards in web usability. I believe users are more willing to scroll now then they were years ago, yet it’s still a good idea to keep your primary content above the fold if at all possible.

    Reply
  68. 68
    mb
    September 24th, 2009 7:35 am

    Yet another excellent resource. All very useful points. I like lists like this as they help designers win battles against managers who don’t have a clue!

    Reply
  69. 69
    Tactica
    September 24th, 2009 7:55 am

    It’s worth noting that ‘the fold’ on 768 is several fewer pixels high than that – around 530 on my netbook (which displays @ 1024). Check out Twitter’s login page, which seemed absurdly small on my high-res workhorse laptop – the design is about 780 x 530 and fits perfectly in my netbook’s Firefox.

    Love the eyetracking info. Hilarious that users (humans!) look in the direction the character onscreen is looking!

    Reply
  70. 70
    Nabha
    September 24th, 2009 8:31 am

    Great article! I’m looking forward to sharing it with some others. You could have called it, “Usability for Designers,” and it also works great as a basic-usability-for-beginners article. Very clear, lots of illustrations.

    If you are targeting a beginning audience, you might include best practices with the case studies statistics. It won’t help a beginner to know that most sites out there align the submit button to the left or center, but it will help them to know that aligning it to the left has the best usability. (You do this already in your bullet point on the number of characters to have in a line — and, in so doing, show that most sites get it wrong!)

    Anyway, great job! Thank you for taking the time to put this together.

    Reply
  71. 71
    Anonymous
    September 24th, 2009 8:33 am

    Very handy!! thanks!

    Reply
  72. 72
    maikel
    September 24th, 2009 8:38 am

    Great article, one thing about apple’s search box thou: I think that you picked a wrong website for this part as Apple’s search box has an ‘auto-suggest’. If it was only to show that the box is to small it’s fine.

    Just a small point, yet again a great article :)

    Reply
  73. 73
    Chirag Pinjar
    September 24th, 2009 8:56 am

    Very Informative. Thumbs up!

    Reply
  74. 74
    Theresa Neil
    September 24th, 2009 9:04 am

    Anyone designing or developing forms should have Luke W’s book:

    Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks
    by Luke Wroblewski
    Published May, 2008 by Rosenfeld Media

    It clearly walks you through form design, best practices, different options, and the eye tracking studies- all from current studies.

    His site also has practical instruction for form design, button placement and other usability considerations: http://www.lukew.com/ff/

    Reply
  75. 75
    Arthur Lui
    September 24th, 2009 9:06 am

    Overall a good article, though incorrect about the scrolling.
    The baby face looking in a direction is also an impractical novelty act. Is the suggestion to regularly use faces looking at your ads or other important pieces? I would hope not. I know I’d get irritated seeing random faces looking in random directions.

    Reply
  76. 76
    inagoodcause
    September 24th, 2009 10:09 am

    An extremely useful article!

    Reply
  77. 77
    Bryan
    September 24th, 2009 10:14 am

    Love the baby eye concept. Just amazing that we can figure these things out.

    Reply
  78. 78
    Mondo Print
    September 24th, 2009 10:23 am

    Thanks for this one. This is the most useful article I’ve read in a while. Keep up the good work.

    Cheers!

    Reply
  79. 79
    type nerd
    September 24th, 2009 12:21 pm

    >One em is the width and height of one “m” character

    Incorrect. One em is equal to the type size. So, one em in 12-point type is 12 points. This does not necessarily correspond to the width (and certainly not the height) of an “m” character.

    Reply
  80. 80
    fiji.siv
    September 24th, 2009 12:29 pm

    Good read. Excuse me while I go hack up the site I just finished and move the labels above the fields.

    Reply
  81. 81
    oscar
    September 24th, 2009 12:46 pm

    as usual you guys rock //…

    Reply
  82. 82
    Sonja
    September 24th, 2009 12:53 pm

    About that scrolling… a user review we did recently found that users didn’t scroll on the site homepage but did on all other content pages. Since hearing that I’ve noticed my own behaviour and I’m inclined to do the same. Also I suspect there are different behaviours for blogs and social networking style sites where people expect to see a stream versus a “traditional” website homepage.

    Reply
  83. 83
    Justin R. Buchbinder
    September 24th, 2009 1:04 pm

    This is a great roundup that saves us a lot of clicking around when we have to explain design choices. Thank you for a usable article for usability folks!

    xoJR

    Reply
  84. 84
    SGD
    September 24th, 2009 2:35 pm

    TLDR comments, so forgive me if this has already shown up, but another primary reason for vertically stacking form field labels rather than aligning them horizontally is localization. If you’re creating tools for an international audience, keep in mind that the field label you’re using in English can potentially be much longer in German. Vertically stacking labels and fields mitigates this issue.

    Great collection of studies!

    Reply
  85. 85
    Scorpiono
    September 24th, 2009 2:36 pm

    Wonderful, bookmarking it!

    Reply
  86. 86
    Brett
    September 24th, 2009 3:00 pm

    I have never commented on one of your post before, but being a webs designer, this is a great article. Most useful thing Ive read yet. (and i read every day)

    Reply
  87. 87
    Peter
    September 24th, 2009 3:25 pm

    Outstanding article, surely among your best. Many thanks.

    Reply
  88. 88
    Tom Something
    September 24th, 2009 4:07 pm

    Thanks so much for this. It’s much more concise than many other usability study findings, and this will be a great sort of “Cliff’s Notes” for clients who don’t want to read a bunch of boring, technical stuff. Bonus points, as usual, for visual aids!

    Reply
  89. 89
    dragoshell
    September 24th, 2009 4:29 pm

    Greatly useful and informative article! Thank you for your research.

    Reply
  90. 90
    DocDave
    September 24th, 2009 4:38 pm

    Great article. A collection of some basic information that I have recently overlooked in my designs. Back to basics is right!

    Reply
  91. 91
    Okibi
    September 24th, 2009 4:38 pm

    I was enjoying this post until I read the words “Jakob Nielsen”, then I threw up in my mouth.

    Reply
  92. 92
    Bradley Gauthier
    September 24th, 2009 5:42 pm

    The scroll wheel on all mice probably helps the “users now scroll argument”

    Reply
  93. 93
    Troy McConaghy
    September 24th, 2009 6:18 pm

    If I have a picture of a baby looking at the ads at the side of the page, will people *then* look at the ads?

    Reply
  94. 94
    kusu
    September 24th, 2009 6:25 pm

    hoho..great,
    thanks!

    Reply
  95. 95
    Jonny T
    September 24th, 2009 6:44 pm

    Great post. I am really digging into the usability around drop-downs. Of course Jakob N recommends against using them, but it just seems inconclusive…especially since drop-downs and drop-ups are such a common convention in computers alone.

    Reply
  96. 96
    Jethro Larson
    September 24th, 2009 8:47 pm

    Yawn. These findings are not particularly interesting, and the author’s interpretation is suspect. You’d learn twice as much from any of Nielsen’s articles so I suggest you go to the source. A lot of these confuse trends with heuristics and neither of those are really laws so look at what your site is doing rather than following these blindly.

    Reply
  97. 97
    Madeline Ong
    September 24th, 2009 8:49 pm

    Thank you for this post. It’s the kind I like: concisely written, with just enough examples to illustrate the points. I also appreciate the recap of your past findings. My only complaint is that I think your description of ems is rather obsolete and not entirely accurate. :)

    Reply
  98. 98
    Anup Tilak
    September 24th, 2009 8:59 pm

    this is very interesting stuff. It will help lots of people. Thanks man.

    Reply
  99. 99
    Nitin Garg
    September 24th, 2009 9:33 pm

    Nice Article ! Good to see a usability post.
    I just dont agree with the “Blue is best color for links” point, rest all thanks for sharing !

    Reply
  100. 100
    Mathiew Moussa
    September 24th, 2009 9:43 pm

    excellent article .. if all the ppl in the web industry go through this .. even quickly .. we wouldnt have junk site online

    Reply
  101. 101
    Vimal
    September 24th, 2009 9:51 pm

    Awesome article!
    Three cheers for “Dmitry Fadeyev” :)

    Reply
  102. 102
    kaka
    September 24th, 2009 9:56 pm

    Seems like I made some mistakes. It’s very helpful.

    Reply
  103. 103
    anand vardhan
    September 24th, 2009 10:46 pm

    Awesome article. Keep adding such stuffs.

    Thanks

    Reply
  104. 104
    Adriaan Fenwick
    September 24th, 2009 10:59 pm

    Nice one – I couldn’t agree more on most of the topics. I love the info on how users follow faces as this can be a very valuable tool to use.

    Thanks Smashing Magazine!

    Reply
  105. 105
    Prabhakaran
    September 24th, 2009 11:00 pm

    Very valuable article, every designer should read this!!! Thanks SM for sharing it.

    Reply
  106. 106
    Jay Mavani
    September 24th, 2009 11:22 pm

    Excellent Post!

    Quite arguable in terms of whether a Homepage design should fit without any scroll. Although, more importantly – it’s to do with the minimum resolution you design for. For instance, where I’m from – we design for 1024×768; hence the maximum height is 600px.

    On the other hand, in other parts of the world 1280×800 / 1280×1024 could be regarded as minimum – which in turn gives you a good amount of height to design for.

    So, it’s a lot to do with the resolution you’re designing for as compared to designing without scroll – besides, clients always want to show as much as possible on Homepages. Hence, we try and focus on the most important factors within the no-scroll area (ideally navigation and a banner), whilst the scroll area would consist of secondary factors (other content blurbs, etc.)

    Great article otherwise! :)

    Reply
  107. 107
    Wh0l3
    September 24th, 2009 11:38 pm

    It always is nice to learn something about internet design
    And these 10 tips are very nice
    so thank to you :)

    Reply
  108. 108
    Andrew Larkin
    September 25th, 2009 12:32 am

    Top tips, great article! Love this kind of thing!

    Andy

    Reply
  109. 109
    Vitezslav Valka
    September 25th, 2009 1:35 am

    Really nice and educating… Let’s made new Pixmac homepage then ;-)

    Reply
  110. 110
    Maddox
    September 25th, 2009 1:52 am

    I like how this article talks about the best bits of the content being above the fold, whereas this page has nothing but ads above the fold!

    Reply
  111. 111
    Sergii
    September 25th, 2009 2:25 am

    Very useful findings for IT people and designers!

    Reply
  112. 112
    Simon
    September 25th, 2009 2:39 am

    Nice article, thanks!

    Reply
  113. 113
    japie swanepoel
    September 25th, 2009 2:45 am

    Great stuff thanks. I like.
    It seems that blog readers wanting to post a comment, DO SCROLL!

    Reply
  114. 114
    Tops
    September 25th, 2009 4:24 am

    Amazing !! so much useful information ! Thanks a lot
    And japie up here is right ! we do scroll ! haha

    Reply
  115. 115
    Camilo Sabogal
    September 25th, 2009 5:27 am

    Thanks Dmitri for sharing. very illustrative and interesting article

    Reply
  116. 116
    Tudor Whiteley
    September 25th, 2009 6:42 am

    I think it would be worth noting that these are trends as a few others have noted in the comments…. and they are trends all pulled from 2006.
    The user evolves just as the design does.
    Hoa and Jacob both noted in conferences I’ve been to with them that things do change.
    An example would be that before users could not handle multi-tier menu systems but now they tend to be able to work with a double – tier… not a triple…
    As far as forms I think it’s great from a speed perspective to do the vertical stacking of label to text field but if the form is longer then the three fields suggested other things need to be considered such as the length of the overall form.
    20 fields would be 40 lines long vs. 20 lines long if you used fishbone (label on left and right aligned to the text field) … longer forms could lead to user ‘fatigue’.
    I guess I would suggest not taking these suggestions as laws but rather points to start at and go from there.
    Just some thoughts,
    Tudor

    Reply
  117. 117
    Jack Moffett
    September 25th, 2009 7:02 am

    For interesting counterpoints and discussion of the research presented here, you should check out the thread on the IxDA forums.

    Reply
  118. 118
    Tamixes
    September 25th, 2009 7:05 am

    Thanks! This is a gem. It’s good to have documented back up explaining what designers do instinctively.

    Reply
  119. 119
    Romarto
    September 25th, 2009 8:55 am

    Thanks for work guys !
    Very informative (Like always :)

    Reply
  120. 120
    brian
    September 25th, 2009 9:01 am

    fantastic article!

    Reply
  121. 121
    Ben du Cambodge
    September 25th, 2009 9:48 am

    Thanks for the best practice!

    Ben
    artisanat cambodge

    Reply
  122. 122
    Ben du Cambodge
    September 25th, 2009 9:48 am

    Thanks for the best practice!

    Ben
    artisanat cambodge

    Reply
  123. 123
    Dan the Creator
    September 25th, 2009 1:10 pm

    a very useful and informative article! these are things that we all see everyday, but never give a lot of thought to.

    Reply
  124. 124
    Ash
    September 25th, 2009 1:39 pm

    Yeah really useful thanks – more please.

    Reply
  125. 125
    Ion
    September 25th, 2009 6:26 pm

    Very useful indeed! thanks a lot

    Reply
  126. 126
    John laPlante
    September 25th, 2009 6:40 pm

    I am dubious about the claim about form labels. For a single column of fields or a small number of fields this may be true but for large forms, it makes scanning labels difficult because the user’s eye has to stumble over all the boxes. Look at Tufte’s writing which points to de-cluttering visuals. This practice creates a lot of clutter.

    Reply
  127. 127
    ardyonline
    September 25th, 2009 6:42 pm

    wow! what a great article, including those statistic rate!
    it really helps!

    thanks for sharing this!

    Reply
  128. 128
    Charmaine
    September 25th, 2009 6:44 pm

    Now I feel like an expert in web design!

    Reply
  129. 129
    Carolyn Chan
    September 25th, 2009 8:53 pm

    Thanks for the statistics. Web designers should read this. Web designs shouldn’t just look good, it should WORK too.

    Reply
  130. 130
    Ola
    September 26th, 2009 2:41 am

    The sources to the section “Quality Of Design Is An Indicator Of Credibility” are from 2002, 2001 and 1999(!) respectively. Sure, quality never goes out of fashion, but a 10 year old study? That’s aeons when it comes to the web.

    Reply
  131. 131
    design
    September 26th, 2009 8:16 am

    I seem to digg everything from smashing magazine?!?

    Reply
  132. 132
    design
    September 26th, 2009 11:55 am

    What rolls down stairs
    alone or in pairs,
    and over your neighbors dog?

    Reply
  133. 133
    Joel
    September 27th, 2009 1:13 am

    There are often “good” articles on Smashing, but this one was great. The value of good statistical analysis is often over-looked, and even more often not applied, but this was a fantastic article for combining a quick-reference of current user preferences. It’s nice to have a default answer based on more than hear-say or “gut feeling”.

    Reply
  134. 134
    Junkle1
    September 27th, 2009 5:22 am

    I find it interesting/confusing that the way articles are separated on the home page is very similar to the way subsections of the articles are separated on the article page.(10 Useful Usability Findings) I was looking for a “read more” at the end of the first section on the article page because of the similarities. Numbering the sections 1-10 since the article is 10 Useful Findings would make a big difference.

    Reply
  135. 135
    Matsonian
    September 28th, 2009 10:55 am

    Another great post! Absolutely the kind of wisdom and advice that I like to see… incredibly helpful for an after market Jeep parts manufacturer like ourselves where we are dealing with a different kind of product and one that is not purchased on the first visit to the website because of the price point.

    Thank you!

    Reply
  136. 136
    Josse Zwols
    September 28th, 2009 11:02 am

    Nice! Thanks for listing them!

    One small sidenode: the link to your twitter profile doesn’t work. I suspect that you’ve forgotten to suffix “http://”.

    Reply
  137. 137
    Einar Ryvarden
    September 28th, 2009 12:18 pm

    Just wanted to say thank you for a great, great site! One remark: Maybe you should split or otherwise separete out the photo-articles, they have less to do with the core subjects on your site.
    Einar

    Reply
  138. 138
    Derek Pennycuff
    September 28th, 2009 1:13 pm

    I echo comment #28. You did a great job of citing sources in all but 2 cases. Van Schaik and Ling have published together at least 4 times. I’ll probably end up snagging them all if I can get my hands on them, but I’d like to be able to get straight to the punch, so to speak. The only “Lin, 2004″ paper I can find on the ACM Portal that comes close to fitting a study on white space and reading comprehension is specific to online learning in the Chinese language. Those findings may not apply to English. But just because that’s currently my best lead doesn’t mean I think that’s the study you’re citing.

    I’m about to launch a redesign for a community college website and the more peer reviewed, published evidence I can collect to back up the design decisions I have made the better equipped I will be to defend my position (should the need arise, so far what feedback I’ve wrangled out of people has been positive). I can cite blogs and sites like this one and A List Apart all day long, but academia isn’t quite ready to accept you guys as reputable sources just yet. ;)

    Reply
  139. 139
    Internet Strategist @GrowMap
    September 28th, 2009 3:07 pm

    I sincerely hope anyone involved in designing a Web site reads and applies these suggestions. I would add that product descriptions should leave no questions unanswered: people do not buy until they are confident they have all the information they need. Products must include size, color, options. Many ecommerce sites fail sorely at providing these details.

    The only thing I didn’t see in your post was the importance of upgrading the quality of the search function on most e-commerce sites. Most default search functions fall flat on any complex search. Try searching by brand and model or brand and size or color and name and you’ll quickly see what I mean. Many unrelated results are almost as bad as no results. Most visitors will only search once and if your site doesn’t show them what they want they will assume you don’t have it and move on. Most will NOT look around.

    Better usability equals increased revenue. Improve it and conversions WILL go up. Ignore it at your peril because conversions are more important than traffic.

    Reply
  140. 140
    Gidget_Ginsu
    September 28th, 2009 4:50 pm

    I can’t believe there are so many comments defending scrolling. Whether or not a user will scroll is completely dependent on which information mode they are in – serendipitous browsing will make a user less likely to bother with scrolling than a user who has their sights locked on a specific target and is hunting it down methodically.

    I really dislike sites that make me scroll down and read closely to see if they have any useful information for me. Make content scannable and I will happily scroll – at speed. Which raises another point: if you bury your best stuff in long documents, you might get users to scroll down some of the way, but if they have a mouse with a scroll wheel, they are likely to be scrolling at quite a speed, and possibly skimming over your key points. This page (like most smashingpage articles) is a good example of using meaningful headings to help the user scroll and skip to sections that are relevant, possibly the only saving grace of a long page.

    Reply
  141. 141
    inkodeR
    September 28th, 2009 7:18 pm

    Dmitry’s twiiter link is broken.

    Reply
  142. 142
    Chuck Spidell
    September 29th, 2009 12:11 am

    I scrolled to the bottom to post this comment.

    Reply
  143. 143
    dhaneswar
    September 29th, 2009 3:46 am

    Nice one. But the find a usable comment form if you want me to reply next time!!

    Reply
  144. 144
    Charles Severance
    September 29th, 2009 4:50 am

    Excellent article. It is aways nice to get a condensed set of ideas – particularly if you are not deep into usability – but want to learn nuggets from time to time – thanks.

    I do wish that folks would understand that there are really two very different reactions to scrolling depending on the web site. If I am reading an interesting blog post or perhaps the technical specifications of a product – I am happy to scroll and do so all the time. If on the other hand, I am entering grades for 300 students and need to scroll on every grade to find the “Save Grade” button – that is a terrible usability problem.

    Any gross percentage of “will users scroll” “or scrolling is good/bad” is far more a function of he nature of the sites they are looking at rather than the “innate” tendency or willingness to scroll or not scroll.

    Reply
  145. 145
    SuperChef
    September 29th, 2009 5:03 am

    Wonderful compilation! Thanks for documenting this.

    Reply
  146. 146
    shavedave
    September 29th, 2009 8:14 am

    There seems to be a bit of animosity over #4 Most Users Do Not Scroll. I think the title doesn’t match the content of this point and could read: Users Do Not Scroll on Most Pages, which I feel is still generally true. Sure users scroll when they *desire* to, but I feel the import point is: consider what it will take to lure the user into viewing all of your content below the fold. Place the key messages above the fold and design them in a way that keeps a visitor interested. And if you’re balking because *everything* on a busy page is key, then you need to do more homework and find out what is truly key to your visitor.

    Reply
  147. 147
    Grimmash
    September 29th, 2009 9:26 am

    Just wanted to say that for Product Pages, the lack of useful tech info has caused me to give up on the Apple page numerous times, and remains a large part of why I have never bought a Mac – it takes too long to get to the info you want, so I give up.

    My two cents.

    Reply
  148. 148
    tetra
    September 30th, 2009 11:20 am

    Anyone keeping up-to-snuff on the way users are evolving or reading blogs from prominent developers and researchers can play devil’s advocate for a good portion of these. If you’ve got a website that needs to be designed for an audience who has never used the web or are behind the times software-wise, sure, these are just basic things that you should know from the get-go. Web development 101.

    Also, Grimmash, what are you talking about?
    http://www.apple.com/imac/ > http://www.apple.com/imac/features.html / http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html

    Reply
  149. 149
    @SynnoveSilva
    September 30th, 2009 12:44 pm

    Very useful! Thank you.

    Reply
  150. 150
    Peter
    September 30th, 2009 1:37 pm

    Great article! Thx

    Reply
  151. 151
    Peter Boyd
    October 1st, 2009 6:23 am

    Bonus Points: Also notice the F pattern on the right of the baby photos. It’s how people read, in an F pattern.

    Reply
  152. 152
    eCommerceCircle
    October 1st, 2009 12:48 pm

    Very interesting tips

    Reply
  153. 153
    OkieDokie
    October 1st, 2009 6:45 pm

    This thing about userd do not scroll
    I know you r saying there was research and stuff…

    but i belive many user do scroll
    specially the ones used to blog reading

    Reply
  154. 154
    movibes
    October 2nd, 2009 9:06 am

    Just had to type something as well to show my appreciation. Great post.

    Reply
  155. 155
    Julio
    October 2nd, 2009 12:19 pm

    Is the baby dead? [great article]

    Reply
  156. 156
    graphic design calgary
    October 3rd, 2009 8:51 pm

    I can concur, referencing other studies, that these are valued findings. Some seem to be new findings. And very insightful and logical.
    Thanks for this.

    Reply
  157. 157
    Christopher Vance
    October 4th, 2009 4:01 pm

    I stumbled across this, and it’s a very useful collection of data in one post. Thanks!

    Reply
  158. 158
    MIKK3L
    October 5th, 2009 2:12 pm

    Thx.

    But seriously – Jakob Nielsen is so overrated. Check his site out and see for yourself. Usability there? Don’t think so…

    Reply
  159. 159
    DMX
    October 5th, 2009 2:45 pm

    Jakob Nielsen really, REALLY doesn’t know what he’s on about. It’s the sort of stuff that Google loves, ie: data driven design. It doesn’t matter how it looks or works, as long as it matches whatever bullsh*t user survey is kicking about at the time.

    THERE IS NO FOLD.

    Reply
  160. 160
    pj
    October 6th, 2009 1:37 am

    I put in an order for a custom logo for a startup yesterday, and I just sent the designer a link to this article saying he should make sure the drawed figure should look in the direction of the signup info! Just to let you know that you are having impact with your writing, THANKS!

    Reply
  161. 161
    smallstudy
    October 6th, 2009 12:56 pm

    Need to be careful in assumptions that come from very small-scale ’studies.’
    If a small ’study’ is better than none, let me tell you about my 3 uncles who each smoked a pack of cigs a day and lived into their 90’s–and Winston Churchill too. So go forth and smoke all you want! (joking)

    Reply
  162. 162
    madee998
    October 6th, 2009 2:13 pm

    Just had to type something as well to show my appreciation. Great post.
    ^.^

    Reply
  163. 163
    Stumblepba (NGDlover)
    October 6th, 2009 6:27 pm

    I appreciate this article…..but dont agree with the scrolling idea, in fact, I’m scrolling to leave you a reply

    Reply
  164. 164
    Arunkumar
    October 6th, 2009 8:37 pm

    Great Info :)

    Reply
  165. 165
    Joe
    October 7th, 2009 1:11 pm

    Oops, I scrolled.

    Reply
  166. 166
    MetroplexInteractive
    October 8th, 2009 11:35 am

    Interesting to me that search engines also follow the guideline that the most important content is in the upper and upper-left section of each webpage. (As indicated by the heat map above) Designers should consider this along with content creators and navigational architectures.

    MetroplexInteractive – Website Design, Social Media, SEO, Marketing

    Reply
  167. 167
    euingtsma
    October 9th, 2009 1:07 am

    a spelling mistake in guideline No.5: ” if usability ‘is’ your priority” u made it ‘if’. good article :)

    Reply
  168. 168
    Juan Lanus
    October 14th, 2009 2:25 am

    It’s a pity you posted “Form Labels Work Best Above The Field”.
    Thousands of designers are doing so based on a small test done with a small form with a few subjects.
    The test demonstrates, at most, that the time to switch sight from label to input is shorter in 1-column forms. A few milliseconds.
    But a form is affected by many other factors in addition to this one.
    See for example http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=41873#41873 where renowned expert Caroline Jarrett rants about designers that accept blithely the result of such tests.
    Labels on top woth fine for login forms, for example. Moreover, if you write “foo” and “bar” instead of the regular labels it would work anyway.
    Also, labels on top must be smaller for this to work, much smaller. Users 50+ years old will not read as fast as the 8 very young merds that participated in the test.
    There is no magic single solution for every design situation, as you pretend with this posting.

    Reply
  169. 169
    love
    October 15th, 2009 7:16 pm

    really great information. Thank you so very much!:)

    just let love be

    Reply
  170. 170
    nordmarketing ag
    October 16th, 2009 6:55 am

    Usability das unbeliebte Thema bei meinen Kunden, Man sieht nicht wirklich was und kann sich auch nicht erklären, dass das Klicks bringen soll. Ist aber so. Ich finde, dass hier noch sehr viel Arbeit für Agenturen zu leisten ist.

    Reply
  171. 171
    Poonam
    October 16th, 2009 8:07 am

    Thanks for this wonderful article, I already applied in one of the pages.
    Poonam

    Reply
  172. 172
    f.s.
    October 22nd, 2009 1:58 pm

    well done. great. thank you!

    Reply
  173. 173
    palooja
    October 23rd, 2009 4:11 am

    So simple and so interesting. Thanks :)

    Reply
  174. 174
    art@work
    November 24th, 2009 6:56 pm

    A very nice collection of ‘usability’ points though I must point out several severe gliches in your understanding – usability is about “grip” not “traction”. Consider your points 3, 4 and 7. If usability is our concern… 7 is irrelevant and 3 contradicts 9. To take my point, a logo in the top left corner is negligible, while centred on the page it becomes focused – this is usability, it is not design. Considering the implications – the mind seeks logic not beauty and unfortunately many researchers (JN included) fail to differentiate or worse indulge the herd instinct over logicality; resulting in subjective analysis of subjective material. Juan Lanus’ comment regarding forms correctly highlights this point – forms are logic based… to which I would suggest the best solution in forms is to include the field title within the text field (these days scripts allow us to do so).

    Usability is inexorably tied to logic and structure… easily taken as a crutch by inept designers and dogmatic clients. Lets keep the presentation layer as clean as possible through the logical procession of data.

    Thanks for a consistently great website – full of these topical gems.

    Reply
  175. 175
    Jason
    December 8th, 2009 7:18 am

    10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines:

    #11
    Make your web page work in IE6?

    :-)

    Reply
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