by Mashhoor Al Dubayan
Two essential things many amateur web designers/developers tend to miss these days:
- Support for web standards/conventions.
- Common sense.
The first might not interfere with the visitors’ experience (it’s still important though), but the second, which these 9 things I’m going to mention belong to, impacts it directly. Even if you completely ignore number 1, you could still apply common sense with little to no effort:
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by Mashhoor Al Dubayan
What you will learn:
Almost everything you need to know about Web Usability. “Don’t Make Me Think” teaches you how (and encourages you to) make usable web sites - web sites that won’t force the user to think to figure out how they work, hence the name: don’t make me think.
Prerequisites:
Nothing. Just a brain and common sense.
Target Audience:
Anyone who owns, runs, develops or designs a web site.
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by Mashhoor Al Dubayan
What you will learn:
Defensive Design for the Web contains 40 guidelines that basically revolve around three things:
- Clearly and politely telling your web site’s visitors what to do and/or what to expect.
- Avoiding things that cause frustrations, and providing helpful “help” wherever and whenever they need it.
- Helping your visitors recover from different kinds of errors and dead-ends.
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by Mashhoor Al Dubayan
This is a technique I’ve been using in the local FAQ at work which, as I’ve been told, makes people find the answers they’re looking pretty fast.
Say we had this simple FAQ about accounts at example.com:
- How do i activate my example.com account?
-
- What are its limitations?
- What happens after the trial period expires?
- How do i renew my subscription?
- How can i reach technical support?
Users will have to read every question in order to find the answer they’re looking for. Some might even skip it if it had a lot of questions, which is besides the point.
Now let’s see what it would look like after emphasizing the key word(s) for each question:
- How do i activate my example.com account?
-
- What are its limitations?
- What happens after the trial period expires?
- How do i renew my subscription?
- How can i reach technical support?
Now that key words are emphasized, users will be able to scan this FAQ much faster; all they need to do is search for the words that are relevant to their question. Some will even be able to spot the question they want at first glance. Try not to emphasize too many key words though, as it will only end up confusing readers.
Of course, this also applies to paragraphs, not just lists , as long as you emphasize key words intelligently.
