Warmest Greetings,

Usability is like marriage.  

:: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 ::

Sooner or later, it will be tested.

It's always amazed me, back when I provided search engine optimization services, how many times a client didn't bother to work on their website to make it sell once it was found. Even today, with all the various methods used by SEO/SEM's to help websites rank better in SERPS, none of them is tested for what happens after that first click occurs.

Sure, some people get server traffic stats and read them to figure out what engines came to find their web pages, not what people came to use their website.

The good news is more and more folks are learning the value of making web pages come up for certain keywords and making sure the website visitor was satisfied with what they saw and found once they got there.

This is why usability is the leading forum topic at Cre8asiteForums. Most people consider Cre8asiteForums an "SEO Forum" but we never wanted it to be soley focused on that. We wanted to provide a forum where people can come for help at the very beginning stages of web design and not be intimidated or embarressed to ask questions. Hence, Site Planning and Preparation.

We also push the final stages and testing designs during the build process. Website Hospital is enormously popular for free testing and peer reviews.

But my favorite place is about a topic many people are just learning about. That's the Usability Forum. Moderator Bill Slawski gathered up for us a list of last year's best posts in that forum. It's called Usability Threads in 2003

Among the hot ones were:

What is the best text style for web design?

"This thread spawned a great dialogue involving system fonts, favorite fonts, typography, readability, alternate print pages, and CSS print style sheet versions, and some great links about optimum sizes and fonts for design."


An Interaction Design Forum? desirability, captology, etc

"Forum member DCrx introduced us to some topics that we'd actually like to see more of here in the forums, including the study of computers as Persuasive Technology, or captology; desirability, and interaction design. I know I've been referring a lot of people to the Stanford Persuasive Technologies pages, especially when the topic of credibilty arises. How does your design influence and persuade people?"


Splash page Usability

"They often are a topic of scorn and ridicule, but we sort of dared here to ask, "Could there be positive reasons to use a splash page?" And, you know what? We found some."

What is the Return on Investment (ROI) for usability?

"A topic that I'm guessing will show up at least once a year in any forum involving usability. some great points, and some useful links."

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 1/28/2004 03:32:59 PM

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