Warmest Greetings,

:: Monday, September 08, 2003 ::

Things are hopping in the Usability forum at Cre8asiteForums

I pointed out a newly released article by HFI (Human Factors International) called Are We There Yet? Effects of Delay on User Perceptions of Web Sites. Cre8asiteForums moderator and resident researchaholic, Bill Slawski (aka bragadocchio) isn't convinced this study is totally accurate. He points out another article about a study UIE (User Interface Engineering) published not long ago called The Truth About Download Time and other resources. Taken together, they leave some room for further study. Obviously other factors are involved in how a website visitor judges download time. If you ask them to estimate download time, it doesn't always match actual download time. And,

"When users are complaining about the download speed of your site, what are they actually complaining about? Are you better off making the site load faster or ensuring that users complete their tasks?" by Christine Perfetti, User Interface Engineering writes in her UIE article.

This information is useful for everyday webmasters and used by Quality Assurance engineers such as Performance Testers. Before they can determine guidelines in some cases, they must know what user preferences and habits are. The bottom line is often going to work itself out later when the overall return on investment (ROI) is computed. Following a suggestion such as the "10 second rule" just may not always apply. The task itself, and how easy it is to perform, may matter more to your customer than how long it takes to see it.

Also hot are several other threads including:

Surveys - How Do You Take Them?:

"You gotta pay me or I've gotta be interested in the results."

"No popup please! I don't use anti-popup software but my brain is now adapt at automatically closing any unrequested popups without me needing to think about it."

"Do something good and I might complete your survey as a thank you. Do something really bad, and I might complete your survey as vengeance. In either case, there has to be a history."

The Value of User Testing:

"The choice of setting up a session with a third party can be considered of course, but then these are often prohibitively expensive for many small companies. They do have the benefit that the demographic of the testers can be quite tightly controlled. However, the internet opens up a global marketplace, and local usability testing will not provide emphasis on how visitors from different countries and cultures view your site."

"My concern is that while usability testing is expensive and aimed more at the larger companies, that small companies will suffer. Not only might they not have the resources or knowledge to build usability and accessibility features into a web site, but they can't afford usability testing until it's too late. Internet-based testing can help to solve this problem."

"There are ways for a small businesses to do a very inexpensive user test. All you have to do is Nielsen's el cheapo version. He reckons it will cost you about $200."

Here are few things that caught my eye thanks to folks who send me leads:

Style Without Substance: Will HTML Email Survive? - This is a good reminder to offer your website visitors a choice.

Usable Forms (for an international audience) - This is a keeper, worth printing out and keeping handy for designing forms.

And finally, Danny Sullivan writes about SEMPO. "The registered, non-profit group aims to raise the profile of search engine marketing, so that potential clients will understand what SEM is and budget money for it."

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 9/08/2003 09:45:19 AM

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