Jacob Nielsen, Marie Tahir - Homepage Usability
Most authors leave a significant gap between the theory and practice--a gap
that it is left up to the reader to fill. Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed
boldly steps into that gap with specific observations and suggestions backed with
solid quantitative analysis. This book focuses only on homepage design as the
most important point of presence for any Web site.
This definitive work is co-authored by Jakob Nielsen--the accepted industry
expert in Web usability--and Marie Tahir, an expert in user profiling. Their collaboration
has produced a guide of such rare practical benefit that Web designers will likely
wear out their first copy scouring the pages to savour every last morsel of wisdom.
The book begins with a chapter of precise guidelines that serve as a checklist
of the features and functionality to include on your homepage. The specifics found
in categories such as "revealing content through examples" and "graphic
design" will quickly hook you and whet your appetite for more. These guidelines
are followed up with hard statistics and an examination of the ominous Jakob's
Law: "users spend most of their time on other sites than your site."
Here you'll find some interesting statistics about how various conventions like
search, privacy policies, and logos are used.
All this leads up to the showcase element of the book--a systematic deconstruction
of 50 of the most popular homepages on the Web. The authors painstakingly pick
apart each in an uncompromising autopsy of usability. Each site is graphically
analysed for its use of real estate and summarised with the frankness only found
from true experts. Then each section of the homepage is bulleted and analysed
for potential improvements.
Stephen W. Plain, amazon.com
About the Author
Jakob Nielsen is known as the father of web usability.His interviews frequently
appear in media from academic journals to Wall Street Journal and USA Today, as
well as television appearances. He is a principal of the Nielsen/ Norman Group,
which specializes in consulting and research on usability and design issues. Other
books published by this author- 1. Designing Web Usability (New Riders, 12/99)
2. Usability Engineering (Morgan Kaufman, 1993)
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