Overview
Quick! You have 10 seconds to show your face to the world! What does your homepage say? In a world of information overload and dying dot.coms, your homepage must grab the attention of visitors, tell them where they are, and let them know where they can go. Does your site pass the test? Homepage Usability is all about making that first impression. Is your tag line effective? Can visitors find your search box? How difficult is the page to navigate? What percentage of your homepage is devoted to actual content? By putting 50 of today's top sites to the test, web usability experts Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir show you what makes for goodmdand not so goodmdfirst impressions. This book contains hundreds of examples that you can employ on your own homepage. Apply the best. Avoid the worst.
Synopsis
The book begins with a briefing on Jakob's web usability principles, themselves culled from years of research. The 50 sites fall under such categories as Fortune 500 Sites, Highest-Traffic Sites, and E-Commerce Sites.
The content is simply presented: Four book pages are devoted to each homepage. The first page is a clean screenshot of the site's homepage (for readers to make their own, unbiased judgments), followed by a page that explains the site's purpose and summarizes its success—or failure—at usabilty. The third and fourth pages are devoted to crtiques, where Jakob and Marie present no-holds-barred commentary for specific usability practices, as well as suggestions for improvement. Although only the homepage of each site is analyzed, many of the critiques can be applied to overall website design.
Library Journal
Nielsen, dogmatic don of web usability, and his strategy director Tahir believe that a company needs a well-designed homepage to succeed online. They provide 113 brief usability guidelines that lead into a chapter on homepage statistics, giving readers an idea of conventions to follow or break. The homepages of 50 major web sites, from About.com to Yahoo.com, are then pictured and critiqued in terms of those recommendations and statistics. A useful resource for both novice and professional web designers; recommended for all libraries. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewYo, web designers: didn't your mom ever tell you about making a good first impression? You wouldn't know it from some home pages. You can build a home page that welcomes visitors, helps them achieve their goals, and effectively communicates your message. Homepage Usability will show you how.
You may know Jakob Nielsen, the author of Designing Web Usability, the bestselling web usability guide ever. You know Marie Tahir's usability work if you've ever tried TurboTax, which darned near makes income taxes easy. Here, they critique 50 leading sites -- providing powerful takeaway lessons on every page.
No punches are pulled. Regarding Drugstore.com: "One of the key values of this site is its low prices on prescription drugs delivered to your home. However, the large and banal promotional item overshadows this value" and "the description of [Primal Elements] is so silly that it's unreadable." Judge for yourself: All the home pages are shown full size, in full color.
You may not always like the authors' comments, but they're consistently well thought out and based on extensive research. If Homepage Usability helps you transform even 10 percent more visits into sales, it'll be the best e-commerce news you've had all year. (Bill Camarda)
Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer with nearly 20 years' experience in helping technology companies deploy and market advanced software, computing, and networking products and services. He served for nearly ten years as vice president of a New Jersey-based marketing company, where he supervised a wide range of graphics and web design projects. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks For Dummies®, Second Edition.