Well, I’m on the last chapter of a very great book. Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug: A common sense approach to web usability. This book is thin, but completely full of good information. It kept me hanging on every word. I am currently reading 4 books consecutively so I will review those as well. This book has been great. It’s approach is quite simple. DON’T MAKE YOUR USERS THINK!
Don’t Make Me Think discusses how even make your users think for a fraction of a second will add to the frustration total and make them leave your site. Some areas of interest are:
- User patterns
- Designing for scanning
- Wise use of copy
- Navigation design
- Home page layout
- Usability testing
The section about how to conduct your own cheap usability tests on your own site is quite informative. It’s amazing how a slight change to the title, tagline, architecture, or positioning of your site can affect your users taking a call-to-action or making a purchase on your site. I highly recommend this book to ANYONE involved in web design, web development, or search engine optimization. Usability and SEO really go hand-in-hand. What’s the point of all the traffic if you aren’t making you users happy and guiding them to action on your site?
January 29th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Yes, I’ve read that book too. It’s a must-read for sure. Thank you for exposing it so other webmasters can keep that book in mind as they design
January 29th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
I also will have to get the book. It is a great thing to properly market your site and do all of the right SEO things to get it found. It is something quite different to get conversions on the site. After all if people are showing up by the thousands but nobody is buying, you might as well turn your site into a museum where you have nothing but lookers and don’t expect any more.
Thanks for the heads up on this read and the great blog.