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Articles on Usability by Jakob Nielsen

This category is made up of articles from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox column on usability. It was added because (1) being very current, it covered topics matching some queries in the HCI Bibliography search service that would not otherwise match any records of more traditional publications, which take longer to appear; (2) the articles contain good meta-data with abstract and keywords that are easy to pick up. May eventually be merged into ARTICLES.

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ALERTBOX

Articles on Usability by Jakob Nielsen

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  1. "About Us" -- Presenting Information About an Organization on Its Website
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-10-27 useit.com
    Study participants searched websites for background information ranging from company history to management biographies and contact details. Their success rate was 70%, leaving much room for usability improvements in the 'About Us' designs.
  2. "Top Ten Mistakes" Revisited
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-05-02 useit.com
    Nine of ten mistakes in Web design identified in May 1996 still cause severe usability problems and should be avoided in modern websites.
  3. 2D is Better Than 3D
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-11-15 useit.com
    People are not frogs, making it difficult to navigate 3D computer spaces: stick to 2D for most navigation designs. Shun virtual reality gimmicks that distract from users' goals
  4. 3Cs of Critical Web Use: Collect, Compare, Choose
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-04-15 useit.com
    According to a recent critical incident analysis, users' most important Web tasks involve collecting and comparing multiple pieces of information, usually so they can make a choice.
  5. 6 Ways to Fix a Confused Information Architecture
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-09-25 useit.com
    When your website's users consistently navigate to the wrong sections, you have many options for getting users back on track, from better labels to clearer structure.
  6. 8 Steps to Prepare for the Holiday Shopping Season
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-09-06 useit.com
    Reduce the bounce rate for organic landing pages, collect data to manage PPC for maximum ROI, and take 6 other steps to maximize your site's holiday sales potential before it's too late.
  7. 10 Best Intranets of 2007
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-01-15 useit.com
    This year's winners emphasized an editorial approach to news on the homepage. They also took a pragmatic approach to many hyped "Web 2.0" techniques. While page design is getting more standardized, there's no agreement on CMS or technology platforms for good intranet design.
  8. 10 Best Intranets of 2005
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-02-28 useit.com
    On average, this year's winning intranets increased site use by 149% with designs that supported bigger screens, multinational users, collaboration, easily updated content, and factory-floor workers.
  9. 10 Best Intranets of 2003
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-10-13 useit.com
    This year's winning intranet designs emphasized workflow support, self-service content management, and offloading tasks from email to collaboration tools. On average, companies spent three years between redesigns, and one year on the redesign itself.
  10. 10 Best Intranet Designs of 2001
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-11-25 useit.com
    The best intranets of 2001 emphasize iterative design and standardized navigation, and feature collaboration tools and content management systems. On average, companies saw intranet use increase by 98% following their winning usability redesigns.
  11. 10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-03-12 useit.com
    Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website.
  12. 10 Best Intranets of 2008
    Jakob Nielsen 2008-01-07 useit.com
    Consistent design and integrated IA are becoming standard on good intranets. This year's winners focused on productivity tools, employee self-service, access to knowledgeable people (as opposed to
  13. 100 Million Websites
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-11-06 useit.com
    The early Web's explosive growth rate has slowed, but even the mature Web is still expanding and recently crossed the 100 M websites mark.
  14. Accessibility Is Not Enough
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-11-21 useit.com
    A strict focus on accessibility as a scorecard item doesn't help users with disabilities. To help these users accomplish critical tasks, you must adopt a usability perspective.
  15. Accessible Design for Users With Disabilities
    Jakob Nielsen 1996-10 useit.com
    How to design Web sites that are accessible for users with various disabilities. Includes advice for designing for users with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive disabilities. Using good ALT-tests is only one of the rules
  16. Acting on User Research
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-11-08 useit.com
    User research offers a learning opportunity that can help you build an understanding of user behavior, but you must resolve discrepancies between research findings and your own beliefs.
  17. Advertising Doesn't Work on the Web
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-09-01 useit.com
    The Web is a cognitive medium; the user owns the navigation and won't wait for emotional brand messages. Product sites and classifieds have value; most ads get puny click-through and few customers
  18. After the Buy Button: Generating Repeat Purchases in E-Commerce
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-07-06 useit.com
    The best way for e-commerce sites to increase subsequent orders is to treat customers well after they place their initial order.
  19. Alertbox #200
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-09-29 useit.com
    I've published 200 Alertbox columns on the Web since 1995; in addition to achieving key victories over multi-million-dollar special interests and enemies of usability, the column's readership statistics validate the practice of archiving content.
  20. Alertbox #200
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-09-29 useit.com
    I've published 200 Alertbox columns on the Web since 1995; in addition to achieving key victories over multi-million-dollar special interests and enemies of usability, the column's readership statistics validate the practice of archiving content.
  21. Alertbox 5 Years Retrospective
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-05-28 useit.com
    Since 1995, the readership of the Alertbox has grown by 4,800%. Most of the 105 old usability columns remain valid to this day since people change more slowly than the technology. But the Alertbox has encountered some setbacks as well.
  22. Alertbox: Ten Years
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-06-01 useit.com
    300,000 words of usability essays have had an impact: online user interfaces are considerably easier to use now than they were in 1995. Many predictions and recommendations have come true, though the full Alertbox vision is far from realized.
  23. Alternative Interfaces for Accessibility
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-04-07 useit.com
    The key difference between user interfaces for sighted users and blind users is not that between graphics and text; it's the difference between 2-D and 1-D. Optimal usability for users with disabilities requires new approaches and new user interfaces.
  24. Amazon No Longer the Role Model for E-Commerce Design
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-07-25 useit.com
    Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status as the world's largest and most established e-commerce site. Normal sites should not copy Amazon's design.
  25. Archiving Usability Reports
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-06-13 useit.com
    Most usability practitioners don't derive full value from their user tests because they don't systematically archive the reports. An intranet-based usability archive offers four substantial benefits.
  26. Are Users Stupid?
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-02-04 useit.com
    Opponents of the usability movement claim that it focuses on stupid users and that most users can easily overcome complexity. In reality, even smart users prefer pursuing their own goals to navigating idiosyncratic designs. As Web use grows, the price of ignoring usability will only increase.
  27. Authentic Behavior in User Testing
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-02-14 useit.com
    Despite being an artificial situation, user testing generates realistic findings because people engage strongly with the tasks and suspend their disbelief.
  28. Avoid Within-Page Links
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-02-21 useit.com
    On the Web, users have a clear mental model for a hypertext link: it should bring up a new page. Within-page links violate this model and thus cause confusion.
  29. Avoiding Commodity Status
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-02-03 useit.com
    PCs do not need to be commodities: a focus on quality can differentiate both products and services. Software has great potential for getting better, as shown by an under-appreciated feature in Windows XP that can save users $2,000 per year.
  30. B2B Usability
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-06-01 useit.com
    User testing shows that business-to-business websites have substantially lower usability than mainstream consumer sites. If they want to convert more prospects into leads, B2B sites should follow more guidelines and make it easier for prospects to research their offerings.
  31. B2B: Help Your Fans Convince Their Bosses
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-04-26 useit.com
    B2B websites must support a more complex buying process than B2C sites. Three key goals are to make a buyer's shortlist, offer a downloadable advocacy kit, and build a reputation for great service.
  32. Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-08-20 useit.com
    Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the 4 design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.
  33. Becoming a Usability Professional
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-07-22 useit.com
    A successful usability career requires some theoretical knowledge, but mainly rests on brainpower and many years' experience testing and studying users. The only way to gain that experience is to start now.
  34. Better Than Reality: A Fundamental Internet Principle
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-03-08 useit.com
    Instead of emulating the real world, websites should build on the strengths of the medium and go beyond what's possible in physical reality: be non-linear, customize service, ignore geography
  35. Beyond Accessibility: Treating Users with Disabilities as People
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-11-11 useit.com
    With current Web design practices, users without disabilities experience three times higher usability than users who are blind or have low vision. Usability guidelines can substantially improve the matter by making websites and intranets support task performance for users with disabilities.
  36. Bill Gates Shopping List for the Internet Desktop
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-12-13 useit.com
    The Mac interface and its clones must die and be replaced by an Internet Desktop based on explicit quality ratings, micropayments, non-linear authoring, and a scriptable Web
  37. Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill?
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-10-01 useit.com
    Introductory text on Web pages is usually too long, so users skip it. But short intros can increase usability by explaining the remaining content's purpose.
  38. Blog Usability: Top Ten Design Mistakes in Weblogs
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-10-17 useit.com
    Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.
  39. Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-04-10 useit.com
    Breadcrumbs use a single line of text to show a page's location in the site hierarchy. This secondary navigation technique is increasingly beneficial to users.
  40. Bridging the Designer-User Gap
    Jakob Nielsen 2008-03-17 useit.com
    Depending on how representative designers are of the target audience, a project might need more or less user testing. Still, usability concerns never go away completely.
  41. Bush vs. Kerry: Email Newsletters Rated
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-09-20 useit.com
    Both candidates for president of the United States offer email newsletters with much good content to excite supporters, but miserable subscription interfaces and several other usability problems.
  42. Canonical Intranet Homepage
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-05-23 useit.com
    Intranet homepages have become very similar in their basic layout. Intranets that look the same can nonetheless differ drastically in usability due to different features and content.
  43. Card Sorting: How Many Users to Test
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-07-19 useit.com
    Testing ever-more users in card sorting has diminishing returns, but you should still use three times more participants than you would in traditional usability tests.
  44. Celebrating Holidays and Special Occasions on Websites
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-10-28 useit.com
    Even small holiday decorations can increase joy of use and make websites feel more current and more connected to users' lives and physical environment. The key is to commemorate without detracting from your users' main reasons for visiting the site.
  45. Change the Color of Visited Links
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-05-03 useit.com
    People get lost and move in circles when websites use the same link color for visited and new destinations. To reduce navigational confusion, select different colors for the two types of links.
  46. Change vs. Stability in Web Usability Guidelines
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-06-11 useit.com
    A remarkable 80% of findings from the Web usability studies in the 1990s continue to hold today.
  47. Changes in Web Usability Since 1994
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-12-01 useit.com
    Most findings about Web usability from 1994 continue to hold. Scrolling pages and imagemaps are less of a problem; users now demand comprehensive sites.
  48. Checkboxes vs. Radio Buttons
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-09-27 useit.com
    User interface guidelines for when to use a checkbox control and when to use a radio button control. Ten other usability issues for checkboxes and radio buttons.
  49. Classified Advertising: A Web Success
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-09-01 useit.com
    Classifieds will be the only form of successful Web ads: they need 'pull' access to a searchable database. Newspapers will die unless they dominate Web classifieds soon
  50. Command Links
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-05-14 useit.com
    Application commands can be presented as buttons or as links, which offer more room for explanation. For primary commands, however, buttons are still best.
  51. Community is Dead; Long Live Mega-Collaboration
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-08-15 useit.com
    The Web is not a community: a huge impersonal city is a better metaphor. User-contributed content can be valuable (if edited), but chat rooms should be avoided because of participation inequality
  52. Company Name First in Microcontent? Sometimes!
    Jakob Nielsen 2008-03-03 useit.com
    Typically, you should deemphasize your company's name in links, but a new guideline recommends frontloading the name for search engine links under certain conditions.
  53. Competitive Testing of Website Usability
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-01-19 useit.com
    The average difference in measured usability between competing websites is 68%. This is smaller than expected, but makes sense given the dynamics of design within individual industries.
  54. Conservatism of Web Users
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-03-22 useit.com
    Users demand compliance with established design conventions. No site can stand out any more; all are part of a single interwoven user experience; the Web as a whole dictates design
  55. Content Creation for Average People
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-10-01 useit.com
    To take the Internet to the next level, users must begin posting their own material rather than simply consuming content or distributing copyrighted material. Unfortunately most people are poor writers and even worse at authoring other media. Solutions include structured creation, selection-based media, and teaching content creation in schools.
  56. Content Integration
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-06-27 useit.com
    Web services often collect content from separate sources and present it to users in a single interface. Making such integration usable requires unified meta-content.
  57. Convincing Clients to Pay for Usability
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-05-19 useit.com
    Professionally run design agencies user test their designs to increase the value they deliver to their clients. The challenge is getting clients to understand the benefits of a solid development methodology.
  58. Corporate Usability Maturity: Stages 1-4
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-04-24 useit.com
    As their usability approach matures, organizations typically progress through the same sequence of stages, from initial hostility to widespread reliance on user research.
  59. Corporate Usability Maturity: Stages 5-8
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-05-01 useit.com
    An organization that reaches the managed usability stage still has far to go to reach usability nirvana. Attaining these higher maturity levels requires many years of effort.
  60. Corporate Websites Get a 'D' in PR
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-04-01 useit.com
    Corporations spend millions on PR, and yet the press sections of their websites often fail to meet journalists' most basic information needs. In our recent usability study, journalists found answers to only 68% of their questions across a range of corporate sites.
  61. Cost of User Testing a Site
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-05-03 useit.com
    Across 50 teams, the average time needed for their first usability test of a website was 39 hours. The average site had 11 usability catastrophes that prevented users from completing their tasks.
  62. Customers as Designers
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-06-11 useit.com
    The Internet is undoing the industrial revolution's emphasis on mass-produced products; now everybody can get exactly what they want. But designing the product you want is hard, and current design interfaces are not good enough for novice designers (i.e., all normal customers).
  63. Data Quality and the Web User Experience
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-07-12 useit.com
    Errors in data records destroy the usability of a site and make it difficult to find info. Guidelines for preventing, correcting, and surviving errors.
  64. Data Visualization of Web Stats: Logarithmic Charts and the Drooping Tail
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-08-14 useit.com
    Using a linear diagram to plot data from website traffic logs can lead you to overlook important conclusions. Sometimes advanced visualizations are worth the effort.
  65. Deceivingly Strong Information Scent Costs Sales
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-08-02 useit.com
    Users will often overlook the actual location of information or products if another website area seems like the perfect place to look. Cross-references and clear labels alleviate this problem.
  66. Deep Linking is Good Linking
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-03-03 useit.com
    Links that go directly to a site's interior pages enhance usability because, unlike generic links, they specifically relate to users' goals. Websites should encourage deep linking and follow three guidelines to support its users.
  67. Defeated By a Dialog Box
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-07-23 useit.com
    Interaction techniques that deviate from common GUI standards can create usability catastrophes that make applications impossible to use.
  68. Deferred Hypertext: The Virtues of Delayed Gratification
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-09-30 useit.com
    Navigating a full browsing session to find information can be unpleasant and slow, particularly on mobile devices. Instead, issue a deferred request and have the information arrive later, as done by some SMS systems.
  69. Design Guidelines for Visualizing Links
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-05-10 useit.com
    Textual links should be colored and underlined to achieve the best perceived affordance of clickability, though there are a few exceptions to these guidelines.
  70. Design of Confirmation Messages & Automated Customer Service Email
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-12-08 useit.com
    Transactional email can be a website's customer service ambassador, but messages must first survive a ruthless selection process in the user's in-box. Differentiating your message from spam is thus the first duty of email design.
  71. Design of Email Newsletters
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-09-30 useit.com
    Users have highly emotional reactions to newsletters which feel much more personal than websites. In usability testing, success rates were high for subscribe and unsubscribe tasks, but users were frustrated by newsletters that demanded too much of their time.
  72. Designing Web Ads Using Click-Through Data
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-09-02 useit.com
    Search engine ads are one type of Web advertising that can actually work. To create the best ads, do quick experiments and redesign ads based on usability principles for online writing. Doing so helped us increase ad click-through by 55% to 310%.
  73. Did Poor Usability Kill E-Commerce?
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-08-19 useit.com
    User success rates on e-commerce sites are only 56%, and most sites comply with only a third of documented usability guidelines. Given this, improving a site's usability can substantially increase both sales and a site's odds of survival.
  74. Digital Divide: The Three Stages
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-11-20 useit.com
    The economic divide is a non-issue, but the usability and empowerment divides alienate huge population groups who miss out on the Internet's potential.
  75. Directions for Online Publishing
    Jakob Nielsen 1995-08 useit.com
  76. Disabled Accessibility: The Pragmatic Approach
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-06-13 useit.com
    New official standards make it easy to get the top priorities right and make websites accessible for users with disabilities (e.g., blind users who can't see images). But the single-design approach may be nearing the end of its life.
  77. Diversity is Power for Specialized Sites
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-06-16 useit.com
    Small websites get less traffic than big ones, but they can still dominate their niches. For each question users ask, the Web delivers a different set of sites to provide the answers.
  78. Do Government Agencies and Non-Profits Get ROI From Usability?
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-02-12 useit.com
    Although the gains don't fall into traditional profit columns, there are clear arguments for improving usability of non-commercial websites and intranets. In one example, a state agency could get an ROI of 22,000% by fixing a basic usability problem.
  79. Do Productivity Increases Generate Economic Gains?
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-03-17 useit.com
    Usability improvements can save time-on-task, but critics argue that this is not the same as saving money. Others worry that productivity gains cause unemployment. Neither is correct: usable design saves money and saves jobs.
  80. Does Internet=Web?
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-09-20 useit.com
    Advanced functionality requires Internet-enabled client-server software with optimized user interfaces that cannot be delivered in a Web browser. Reserve the Web for hypertext and content features.
  81. Does User Annoyance Matter?
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-03-26 useit.com
    Making users suffer a drop-down menu to enter state abbreviations is one of many small annoyances that add up to a less efficient, less pleasant user experience. It's worth fixing as many of these usability irritants as you can.
  82. Drop-Down Menus: Use Sparingly
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-11-12 useit.com
    Drop-down menus are often more trouble than they are worth and can be confusing because Web designers use them for several different purposes. Also, scrolling menus reduce usability when they prevent users from seeing all their options in a single glance.
  83. Drop-Down Menus: Use Sparingly
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-11-12 useit.com
    Drop-down menus are often more trouble than they are worth and can be confusing because Web designers use them for several different purposes. Also, scrolling menus reduce usability when they prevent users from seeing all their options in a single glance.
  84. Durability of Usability Guidelines
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-01-17 useit.com
    About 90% of usability guidelines from 1986 are still valid, though several guidelines are less important because they relate to design elements that are rarely used today.
  85. DVD Menu Design (guest column by Don Norman, Alertbox Dec. 2001)
    Donald A. Norman 2001-12-09 useit.com
    Guest column by Don Norman: Designers of DVDs have failed to profit from the lessons of previous media. DVD menu structures are baroque, less usable, less pleasurable, less effective. It is time to take DVD design as seriously as we do web design. The field needs discipline, attention, to the User Experience, and standardization of control and display formats.
  86. eBooks (Electronic Books) - A Bad Idea
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-07-26 useit.com
    The book metaphor is too strong and leads designers astray, missing out on the computer's potential for dynamic and interactive text.
  87. Effective Use of Cascading Style Sheets
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-07-01 useit.com
    CSS promotes site consistency and improved usability if linked (not embedded), centrally designed (not by page authors), and actively evangelized with example-rich style manuals. Respect user preferences
  88. Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-06-12 useit.com
    Newsletter usability has increased since our last study, but the competition for users' attention has also grown with the ever-increasing glut of information.
  89. Employee Directory Search: Resolving Conflicting Usability Guidelines
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-02-24 useit.com
    Guidelines conflict on whether to limit intranet search to a single search box or dedicate an additional box to employee directory searches. There's theory to support both guidelines. What's up?
  90. End of Homemade Websites
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-10-14 useit.com
    Web services will free individual site designers from having to program and design common features. This will decrease business costs, increase usability, and let designers focus on and improve features that are unique to each site.
  91. End of Legacy Media
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-08-23 useit.com
    In 5-10 years, newspapers, magazines, books, and TV will cease being separate media forms and will be integrated into unified multimedia Web services.
  92. End of Web Design
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-07-23 useit.com
    Websites have to reduce their differences and allow advanced features to either become standard across sites or be extracted from the sites altogether and placed in the browser. Focus on services and content; use a standard design.
  93. Enterprise Usability
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-11-07 useit.com
    Usability goes beyond the level of individual users interacting with screens. It's also a question of how easy or cumbersome it is for the entire organization to use a system.
  94. Error Message Guidelines
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-06-24 useit.com
    Established wisdom holds that good error messages are polite, precise, and constructive. The Web brings a few new guidelines: Make error messages clearly visible, reduce the work required to fix the problem, and educate users along the way.
  95. Evangelizing Usability: Changing Strategies at the Halfway Point
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-03-28 useit.com
    The evangelism strategies that help a usability group get established in a company are different from the ones needed to create a full-fledged usability culture.
  96. Eyetracking Study of Web Readers
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-05-14 useit.com
    Poynter study confirms older Web content studies: plain headlines work best; users hunt for info, often ignore graphics, and interlace sites.
  97. F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-04-17 useit.com
    Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.
  98. Failure of Corporate Websites
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-10-18 useit.com
    Most corporate sites are so bad that Web usability problems cost a large company millions of dollars per year. On average, users fail when they try to accomplish tasks on the Web.
  99. Fallacy of Atypical Web Examples
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-06-01 useit.com
    Common conclusions about Yahoo, Wall St. Journal, Disney, The WELL, and Amazon.com are wrong: generalizing Web trends from popular examples featured in the press is dangerous; spectacular case studies are often outliers
  100. Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Looks Like a Promotion = Ignored
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-09-04 useit.com
    A site did most things right, but still had a miserable 14% success rate for its most important task. The reason? Users ignored a key area because it resembled a promotion.
  101. Fast, Cheap, and Good: Yes, You Can Have It All
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-01-02 useit.com
    The sooner you complete a usability study, the higher its impact on the design process. Slower methods should be deferred to an annual usability checkup.
  102. Feature Richness and User Engagement
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-08-06 useit.com
    The more engaged users are, the more features an application can sustain. But most users have low commitment -- especially to websites, which must focus on simplicity, rather than features.
  103. Features for the Next Generation of Web Browsers
    Jakob Nielsen 1995-07 useit.com
  104. Feedback From Users of an Archive
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-01-10 useit.com
    How to collect usability data from site users, using a historical archive as the case study. Keep surveys simple, collect data from real-world usage, and get feedback from friends of the site.
  105. Field Studies Done Right: Fast and Observational
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-01-20 useit.com
    Field studies should emphasize the observation of real user behavior. Simple field studies are fast and easy to conduct, and do not require a posse of anthropologists: All members of a design team should go on customer visits.
  106. First Rule of Usability? Don't Listen to Users
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-08-05 useit.com
    To design an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations about future behavior.
  107. Flash Accessibility: Making Web-Based Functionality Easier for Users With Disabilities
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-10-14 useit.com
    Flash designs are easier for users with disabilities to use when designers combine visual and textual presentations, minimize incessant movement, decrease spacing between related objects, and simplify features.
  108. Flash Usability and Web-Based Applications
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-11-25 useit.com
    In usability tests of 46 Flash applications, we identified several basic issues related to Web-based functionality's ephemeral nature. Some findings restate old truths about GUIs; others reflect the Net's new status as nexus of the user experience.
  109. Flash: 99% Bad
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-10-29 useit.com
    Although multimedia has its role on the Web, current Flash technology tends to discourage usability for three reasons: it makes bad design more likely, it breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction style, and it consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing a site's core value.
  110. Flash: 99% Bad
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-10-29 useit.com
    Although multimedia has its role on the Web, current Flash technology tends to discourage usability for three reasons: it makes bad design more likely, it breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction style, and it consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing a site's core value.
  111. Formal Usability Report vs. Quick Findings
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-04-25 useit.com
    Formal reports are the most common way of documenting usability studies, but informal reports are faster to produce and are often a better choice.
  112. Forms vs. Applications
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-09-19 useit.com
    Once an online form goes beyond two screenfulls, it's often a sign that the underlying functionality is better supported by an application, which offers a more interactive user experience.
  113. Frames Suck Most of the Time
    Jakob Nielsen 1996-12 useit.com
    frames, usability, hypertext, navigation, Web pages, unified conceptual model, atomic unit of Web content
  114. Functionality Apps vs. Content Apps: Open New Windows?
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-10-15 useit.com
    Applets are divided into two categories: functionality applets that need to open in a new window and content applets that should stay on the browser page.
  115. Gateway Pages Prevent PDF Shock
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-07-28 useit.com
    Spare your users the misery of being dumped into PDF files without warning. Create special gateway pages that summarize the contents of big documents and guide users gently into the PDF morass.
  116. Generic Commands
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-10-29 useit.com
    Applications can give users access to a richer feature set by using the same few commands to achieve many related functions.
  117. Global Web: Driving the International Network Economy
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-04-19 useit.com
    Global use of websites leads to international usability problems and coping with the levels of Internet maturity in different countries; many of which are gaining rapidly
  118. Graceful Degradation of Scalable Internet Services
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-10-31 useit.com
    Specialized Internet applications will return to provide richer UIs than are possible in browsers, but browsers will remain and new, smaller devices will arise, so content and features must work across three levels of sophistication. WAP will fail.
  119. Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-03-20 useit.com
    Clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less.
  120. Guidelines for Multimedia on the Web
    Jakob Nielsen 1995-12 useit.com
  121. High-Cost Usability Sometimes Makes Sense
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-11-05 useit.com
    Computing the net present value (NPV) lets you estimate the most profitable level of usability investment. For big projects, expensive usability can pay off.
  122. History has a Lesson for HotJava
    Jakob Nielsen 1995-06 useit.com
  123. Home Page Design Guidelines
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-05-12 useit.com
    A company's homepage is its face to the world and the starting point for most user visits. Improving your homepage multiplies the entire website's business value, so following key guidelines for homepage usability is well worth the investment.
  124. Homepage Real Estate Allocation
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-02-10 useit.com
    On average, sample sites evenly distributed valuable screen space between content, navigation, fluff, blank areas, and system overhead. Areas of user interest should occupy more than the current 39%.
  125. How Much Bandwidth is Enough? A Tbps!
    Jakob Nielsen 1995-11 useit.com
  126. Hyped Web Stories Are Irrelevant
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-04-03 useit.com
    The fads and big deals that get the press coverage are not important for running a workhorse website. To serve your customers, it's far better to emphasize simplicity and quality than to chase buzzwords.
  127. Improving Usability Guideline Compliance
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-06-24 useit.com
    Over the last 1.5 years, the average compliance with established usability guidelines increased by 4%. If we can sustain this level of improvement, we'll reach the ideal of 90% guideline compliance in 2017.
  128. In Defense of Print
    Jakob Nielsen 1996-02 useit.com
  129. In the Future, We'll All Be Harry Potter
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-12-09 useit.com
    The world of magic is a world where inanimate objects come alive; it's as if they had computational power, sensors, awareness, and connectivity.
  130. Incompetent Email Marketing = Lost Future Opportunities
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-10-31 useit.com
    Lack of personalization made an email newsletter completely useless to the recipient, damaging long-term customer relationship efforts.
  131. Increasing Returns for Websites
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-04-15 useit.com
    How much better is it to be a *big* website? Large sites can use their own hyperlinks to drive even more traffic, but small sites generate more value through focused content and microtransactions
  132. Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-06-30 useit.com
    The easier it is to find places with good information, the less time users will spend visiting any individual website. This is one of many conclusions that follow from analyzing how people optimize their behavior in online information systems.
  133. Information Pollution
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-08-11 useit.com
    Excessive word count and worthless details are making it harder for people to extract useful information. The more you say, the more people tune out your message.
  134. Informational Articles Must Ask For the Order
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-08-23 useit.com
    Unless you have explicit links to product pages from article content, users who visit articles directly from search engines might never realize that you sell related products.
  135. Interface Standards and Design Creativity
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-08-22 useit.com
    Standards ensure a consistent vocabulary, but don't limit designers' freedom (and responsibility) in deeper design issues. Also: Guidelines for writing design standards.
  136. International Sites: Minimum Requirements
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-08-08 useit.com
    Users from other countries have special needs related to entry fields for names and addresses, measurements and dates, and information about regional product standards.
  137. International Web Usability
    Jakob Nielsen 1996-08 useit.com
    An Alertbox column.
  138. Internet Client Design
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-04-30 useit.com
    Napster, IE 5 for the Mac, and Yahoo FinanceVision introduce specialized Internet UIs beyond the standard page viewing that had been unchanged since Mosaic.
  139. Internet Hard to Use for Novice Users
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-04-01 useit.com
    Examples from tech support calls show the immense difficulties novice users have in using the Internet: be prepared if you field apps intended for broad usage
  140. Internet Stock Valuation and Future User Characteristics
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-01-17 useit.com
    Unique visitors are a poor measure of user loyalty. Also, future users are late adopters and not likely to all patronize current popular sites. So beware of over-valuing Internet stock.
  141. Intranet Design Annual: 10 Best Intranets of 2002
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-09-03 useit.com
    This year's winning intranet designs emphasized integrated support of international offices, long development times (two years on average), one-stop start-up screens and single sign-in, and usability testing of interfaces for content contributors.
  142. Intranet Information Architecture (IA)
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-11-26 useit.com
    In analyzing 56 intranets, we found many common top-level categories, labels, and navigation designs, but ultimately, the diversity was too great to recommend a single IA.
  143. Intranet Portal Usability and Design
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-03-31 useit.com
    Internet portals are virtually dead, but a portal approach can tame the unruly chaos on internal company networks. Intranet portals overcome many Internet portal limitations, and might be the best hope for productivity and a unified user experience.
  144. intranet portals
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-04-04 useit.com
    An intranet should have a single home page that integrates a directory hierarchy, search, and news. Most intranets are chaotic, under-funded, and lack design standards, causing huge losses in employee productivity.
  145. Intranet Portals Get Streamlined
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-10-24 useit.com
    An analysis of intranet portals found slimmer information architectures and a renewed emphasis on fresh content and useful applications. Past findings, including those on role-based personalization, were confirmed.
  146. Intranet Usability Shows Huge Advances
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-10-09 useit.com
    Measured usability improved by 44% compared to our last large-scale intranet study. The new research identified 5 times the previous number of intranet design guidelines.
  147. Intranet Usability: The Trillion-Dollar Question
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-11-11 useit.com
    The average mid-sized company could gain $5 million per year in employee productivity by improving its intranet design to the top quartile level of a cross-company intranet usability study. The return on investment? One thousand percent or more.
  148. intranet vs. Internet Design
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-09-15 useit.com
    Your intranet should have different visual style and navigational architecture from your website since users, tasks, and information all differ. Intranets should be managed diversity; neither totalitarian nor anarchies
  149. Is Navigation Useful?
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-01-09 useit.com
    Web users go straight for content and ignore navigation areas. Limited structural navigation and local navigation still help, but general navigation should be avoided and generic links minimized to the truly useful.
  150. Japanese Products Map the Mobile Road Ahead
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-04-29 useit.com
    Japan is now shipping a wide variety of new Internet-connected devices. Among the highlights are new mobile photography units like Eggy, and i-mode telephones with liberating two-dimensional controls.
  151. Keep Online Surveys Short
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-02-02 useit.com
    To ensure high response rates and avoid misleading survey results, keep your surveys short and ensure that your questions are well written and easy to answer.
  152. Kids' Corner: Web Usability for Children
    Shuli Gilutz 2002-04-16 useit.com
    Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing websites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation.
  153. Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-04-14 useit.com
    Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing websites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation.
  154. Kill the 53-Day Meme
    Jakob Nielsen 1995-09 useit.com
  155. Lack of Navigation Support in v.4.0 Browsers
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-11-01 useit.com
    Four years of progress in Web browsers have given us more fancy presentation but almost no improvements in helping users navigate the Web and getting the information they need.
  156. Let Users Control Font Size
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-08-19 useit.com
    Tiny text tyrannizes users by dramatically reducing task throughput. IE4 had a great UI that let users easily change font sizes; let's get this design back in the next generation of browsers.
  157. Life-Long Computer Skills
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-02-26 useit.com
    Schools should teach deep, strategic computer insights that can't be learned from reading a manual.
  158. Link Titles Help Users Predict Where They Are Going
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-01-11 useit.com
    Some browsers pop up a short explanation of a link *before* the user selects it. Such link titles can give users a preview of where the link will lead, improve their navigation, and reduce disorientation.
  159. Linkrot
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-06-14 useit.com
    6% of the Web's links are broken, diminishing its usability. All old URLs should be kept working indefinitely - otherwise you throw away business.
  160. Location Finders and Store Locators
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-07-08 useit.com
    When we asked users to find a nearby store, office, dealership, or other outlet based on information provided at a parent company's website, users succeeded only 63% of the time. On average, the 10 sites we studied complied with less than half of our 21 usability guidelines for locator design.
  161. Location is Irrelevant for Usability Studies
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-04-30 useit.com
    You get the same insights regardless of where you conduct user testing, so there's no reason to test in multiple cities. When a city is dominated by your own industry, however, you should definitely test elsewhere.
  162. Loneliness and the Internet
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-02-20 useit.com
    Studies of the social impact of the Internet must consider the changing lifestyle of the new economy and not relate solely to industrial-age concepts.
  163. Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-11-12 useit.com
    Information foraging shows how to calculate your content strategy's costs and benefits. A mixed diet that combines brief overviews and comprehensive coverage is often best.
  164. Low-End Media for User Empowerment
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-04-21 useit.com
    Fancy media on websites typically fails user testing. Simple text and clear photos not only communicate better with users, they also enhance users' feeling of control and thus support the Web's mission as an instant gratification environment.
  165. Low-Literacy Users
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-03-14 useit.com
    Lower-literacy users exhibit very different reading behaviors than higher-literacy users: they plow text rather than scan it, and they miss page elements due to a narrower field of view.
  166. Loyalty on the Web
    Jakob Nielsen 1997-08-01 useit.com
    Loyal users who return to a site many times are more valuable than 'site tourists' who simply check out a few pages. Loyalty is built by fresh content, update notifications, and customization and other ways of rewarding repeat visits
  167. Mailing List Usability
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-08-20 useit.com
    Mailing list content must be ultra-short. Provide separate email addresses for subscribing and unsubscribing and include info on how to get off in every mailing list message. Improved usability increased subscriptions by 128% in one case study.
  168. Making the Physical Environment Interactive
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-08-05 useit.com
    Tiny motors and sensors will make physical objects interactive and create a renaissance for gestural user interfaces. As interface design moves from the screen to the material world, the need for simple, easy to use designs will only increase.
  169. Making Web Advertisements Work
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-05-05 useit.com
    Web users are highly goal-driven, and ads that interfere with their goals will be ignored. To succeed, ads must work with the medium, as well as with the user's aims and mindset.
  170. Marginalia of Web Design
    Jakob Nielsen 1996-11 useit.com
  171. Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-08-30 useit.com
    Simple, unobtrusive designs that support users are successful because they abide by the Web's nature -- and they make people feel good.
  172. Medical Usability: How to Kill Patients Through Bad Design
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-04-11 useit.com
    A field study identified twenty-two ways that automated hospital systems can result in the wrong medication being dispensed to patients. Most of these flaws are classic usability problems that have been understood for decades.
  173. Mental Models For Search Are Getting Firmer
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-05-09 useit.com
    Users now have precise expectations for the behavior of search. Designs that invoke this mental model but work differently are confusing.
  174. Metcalfe's Law in Reverse
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-07-25 useit.com
    Partitioning the Web into N unlinked or otherwise isolated parts will reduce its overall value by a factor of N. A proprietary AOL instant messaging system will be worth only 4% of the full potential, and 1/3 will be completely lost.
  175. Microcontainers: Long-Term Web Change
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-05-31 useit.com
    Treating the Web as a strategic industry driver will lead to a patent bonanza where companies sew up entire ways of doing business. Distribution networks are discussed as one example of such a change
  176. Microcontent: Headlines and Subject Lines
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-09-06 useit.com
    Online headlines must be absolutely clear when taken out of context. They should be written in plain language (no puns or clever headlines). 5 additional guidelines + examples of bad microcontent.
  177. Middle-Aged Users' Declining Web Performance
    Jakob Nielsen 2008-03-31 useit.com
    Between the ages of 25 and 60, people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year - mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties.
  178. Misconceptions About Usability
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-09-08 useit.com
    Misconceptions about usability's expense, the time it involves, and its creative impact prevent companies from getting crucial user data, as does the erroneous belief that existing customer-feedback methods are a valid driver for interface design.
  179. Misleading Results from Study Methodology
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-02-21 useit.com
    Details in measurement methodology make the results of a recent market research study irrelevant for predicting real user behavior on the Web.
  180. Mobile Devices Will Soon Be Useful
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-09-16 useit.com
    New mobile devices and services are more realistic and useful than last year's models, and will likely expand mobile device adoption. Design usability and simplicity are key, particularly for the automotive market where complexity can be dangerous.
  181. Mobile Devices: One Generation From Useful
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-08-18 useit.com
    New mobile devices show a huge improvement over previous generations, but they're still not good enough to score a real win. To get there, we need both PC-integrated applications and specialized mobile services rather than repurposed website content.
  182. Mobile Phones: Europe's Next Minitel?
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-01-07 useit.com
    Europe's cellular phone system is far superior to that in the United States. However, telephones will not be the platform for the mobile Internet. Given this, Europe's advantage may in fact be an obstacle to real innovations, as France's experience with Minitel shows.
  183. Most Hated Advertising Techniques
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-12-06 useit.com
    Studies of how people react to online advertisements have identified several design techniques that impact the user experience very negatively.
  184. Mud-Throwing Theory of Usability
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-04-02 useit.com
    Instead of rushing new websites to a premature launch that will scare away your best customers forever, it is better to run a few fast usability studies in the beginning of the project.
  185. Multiple-User Simultaneous Testing: MUST
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-10-15 useit.com
    Testing 5-10 users at once lets you conduct large-scale usability testing and still meet your deadlines.
  186. Myth of the Genius Designer
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-05-29 useit.com
    Having a good designer doesn't eliminate the need for a systematic usability process. Risk reduction and quality improvement both require user testing and other usability methods.
  187. New Devices Augur Decent Mobile User Experience
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-09-17 useit.com
    The current generation of mobile Internet products and services has miserable usability (as shown at the DEMOmobile 2000 conference). New devices like Blackberry, Modo, and a prototype Microsoft telephone do better.
  188. Newsletter Usability: Can a Professional Publisher Do Better?
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-10-11 useit.com
    The Washington Post's email newsletter earns a high usability score. It's particularly good at setting users' expectations before they subscribe, though the unsubscribe interface has some problems.
  189. Nielsen's Law of Internet Bandwidth
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-04-05 useit.com
    High-end users' bandwidth grows by 50% per year, meaning that personal T-1 lines will be common by 2003. Until then, minimalism will remain the dominant goal of Web design
  190. Novice vs. Expert Users
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-02-06 useit.com
    Web usability has focused on ease of learning for the new visitor. While learnability remains important, it is time to also consider expert performance.
  191. Offshore Usability
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-09-16 useit.com
    To save costs, some companies are outsourcing Web projects to countries with cheap labor. Unfortunately, these countries lack strong usability traditions and their developers have limited access -- if any -- to good usability data from the target users.
  192. One Billion Internet Users
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-12-19 useit.com
    The Internet is growing at an annualized rate of 18% and now has one billion users. A second billion users will follow in the next ten years, bringing a dramatic change in worldwide usability needs.
  193. Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents
    Jakob Nielsen 2005-08-29 useit.com
    When using PC-native file formats such as PDF or spreadsheets, users feel like they're interacting with a PC application. Because users are no longer browsing a website, they shouldn't be given a browser UI.
  194. Outliers and Luck in User Performance
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-03-06 useit.com
    6% of task attempts are extremely slow and constitute outliers in measured user performance. These sad incidents are caused by bad luck that designers can -- and should -- eradicate.
  195. Outsourcing Web Design: Yes/No?
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-06-28 useit.com
    Web design is a core competency for the network economy and should not be outsourced, even though certain specific components may be outsourced.
  196. Pages Must Live Forever
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-11-29 useit.com
    Keeping old content alive will more than double the value of a site and only cost a small investment in content gardening. Removed pages equal lost users.
  197. Paper Prototyping: Get User Data *Before* Coding
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-04-14 useit.com
    With a paper prototype, you can user test early design ideas at an extremely low cost. Doing so lets you fix usability problems before you waste money implementing something that doesn't work.
  198. Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-10-09 useit.com
    In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.
  199. Passive Voice Is Redeemed For Web Headings
    Jakob Nielsen 2007-10-22 useit.com
    Active voice is best for most Web content, but using passive voice can let you front-load important keywords in headings, blurbs, and lead sentences. This enhances scannability and thus SEO effectiveness.
  200. PDF - Avoid for On-Screen Reading
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-06-10 useit.com
    Forcing users to browse PDF files makes usability approximately 300% worse compared to HTML pages. Only use PDF for documents that users are likely to print. In those cases, following six basic guidelines will minimize usability problems.
  201. PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-07-14 useit.com
    Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation.
  202. Personalization is Over-Rated
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-10-04 useit.com
    Personalized Web interfaces are over-hyped: users don't want to be stereotyped and it is too much work for them to enter detailed preference settings.
  203. Persuasive Design and Web Credibility: Review of Captology Book
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-03-03 useit.com
    Review of B.J. Fogg's new Persuasive Technology book, which provides useful principles on how to think about creating persuasive design, but rarely gives detailed design guidelines. The exception is a section on enhancing website credibility.
  204. Poor Code Quality Contaminates Mental Models
    Jakob Nielsen 2001-10-28 useit.com
    Software bugs and system crashes result in huge productivity losses and undermine users' ability to form good models of how computers work. Website designers can help improve user confidence by prioritizing quality and robustness over features and the latest technology.
  205. PR on Websites: Increasing Usability
    Jakob Nielsen 2003-03-10 useit.com
    Compared with a similar 2001 study, a new study of journalists as they looked for information on corporate websites' PR areas showed significant usability improvements: a 5% higher success rate and 15% increased guidelines compliance.
  206. Predictions for the Web in 1998
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-01-01 useit.com
    The Web will become more international (but will overseas sites or American sites benefit?), sites will outsource services, content will adapt to usage patterns in real time.
  207. Predictions for the Web in 1999
    Jakob Nielsen 1998-12-27 useit.com
    Mobile access becomes 3rd Killer App for the Internet, Web standards rebound, customer service is automated, e-commerce patents are issued, and the Web has its own Y2K problems
  208. Predictions for Year 2000
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-12-26 useit.com
    Micropayments will start with value-added content; mobile access; advice and sales become unbundled and physical experience environments may launch.
  209. Print Design vs. Web Design
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-01-24 useit.com
    Anything that is a great print design is likely to be a lousy web design. The big canvas size and controlled layout make print visually superior; Web interaction is more engaging.
  210. Prioritize: Good Content Bubbles to the Top
    Jakob Nielsen 1999-10-17 useit.com
    If everything is emphasized, then nothing stands out. Prioritized design helps users focus on the most promising choices first.
  211. Productivity and Screen Size
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-10-23 useit.com
    A study of the benefits of big monitors fails on two accounts: it didn't test realistic tasks, and it didn't test realistic use. Productivity is a key argument for workplace usability, but you must measure it carefully.
  212. Productivity in the Service Economy
    Jakob Nielsen 2004-03-29 useit.com
    Yes, it is possible for white-collar workers to work smarter and become more productive. While intranet usability provides substantial initial gains, workflow usability can go much further and will save millions of jobs.
  213. Profit Maximization vs. User Loyalty
    Jakob Nielsen 2000-03-05 useit.com
    Instead of maximizing the profits from an individual visit it is better to encourage loyal users and establish non-monetary differentiation and frequent-user programs.
  214. Progressive Disclosure
    Jakob Nielsen 2006-12-04 useit.com
    Progressive disclosure defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error-prone.
  215. Protecting the User's Mailbox
    Jakob Nielsen 2002-03-17 useit.com
    Email is a powerful way to reach customers, but overdoing it is risky. Le