Web Usability & Website Optimization

Web Usability and SEO
A blog on » Web Usability   » Website Accessibility   » Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
1. Bad Search
2. PDF Files for Online Reading
3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links
4. Non-Scannable Text
5. Fixed Font Size
6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility
7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement
8. Violating Design Conventions
9. Opening New Browser Windows
10. Not Answering Users' Questions

Friday, February 25, 2005

Latent Semantic Indexing

Latent semantic indexing adds an important step to the document indexing process. In addition to recording which keywords a document contains, the method examines the document collection as a whole, to see which other documents contain some of those same words. LSI considers documents that have many words in common to be semantically close, and ones with few words in common to be semantically distant. This simple method correlates surprisingly well with how a human being, looking at content, might classify a document collection. Although the LSI algorithm doesn't understand anything about what the words mean, the patterns it notices can make it seem astonishingly intelligent.

Most Important Web Usability Issues

Usability is crucial to create Web sites that your customers will want to return to. If they can't use the site, they won't stay. While there are many specifics, there are some simple steps you can take to create a site that is accessible and useful for your readers.
1) Content
2) Page Layout
3) Colors
4) HTML
5) Download Speed
Most Important Web Usability Issues - Read in details (Courtesy: About.com)

Top 10 Usability Blunders of the Big Players [Usability and Information Architecture]

Web usability is about creating your Website in such a way that your site users can find what they're looking for quickly and efficiently.
In March 2003, Philippe Randour pointed out the Top 7 Usability Blunders Of The Big Players:
1. No Search Function (Guilty party: NBA)
2. Massive Download Time (Guilty party: ESPN)
3. Non-scannable Text (Guilty party: Boeing)
4. Unclear Link Text (Guilty party: Real Player)
5. Poor 404 Error Page (Guilty party: Monster)
6. Visited Links Not Shown (Guilty party: About)
7. Frames Used (Guilty party: Ocado)
8. Links Point to the Current Page (Guilty party: Ford)
9. Important information contained in images (Guilty party: AOL)
10. Unique Scrolling System (Guilty party: BMW)