The Alertbox:
Current Issues in Web Usability
Bi-weekly column by
Dr. Jakob
Nielsen, principal, Nielsen Norman Group
Current Column
- DVD Menu Design:
The Failures of Web Design Recreated Yet Again (December 9,
2001)
Email Alerts
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to anybody.
This is an announcements-only list with very low
volume: one short message every two weeks.
Previous Columns
Highlighted text indicates the most popular
columns according to the log file statistics.
- 10 Best
Intranet Designs of 2001 (November 25, 2001)
- Beyond
Accessibility: Treating Users with Disabilities as People (November 11,
2001)
- Poor Code Quality
Contaminates Users' Conceptual Models (October 28, 2001)
- The End of Homemade
Websites (October 14, 2001)
- Deferred
Hypertext: The Virtues of Delayed Gratification (September 30, 2001)
- Mobile Devices Will
Soon Be Useful (September 16, 2001)
- Designing Web Ads
Using Click-Through Data (September 2, 2001)
- Did Poor Usability
Kill E-Commerce? (August 19, 2001)
- First Rule
of Usability? Don't Listen to Users (August 5, 2001)
- Tagline Blues:
What's the Site About? (July 22, 2001)
- Helping Users Find
Physical Locations (July 8, 2001)
- Error Message
Guidelines (June 24, 2001)
- Avoid PDF
for On-Screen Reading (June 10, 2001)
- Salary Survey:
User Experience Professionals Earn Good Money (May 27, 2001)
- Search: Visible and
Simple (May 13, 2001)
- Japanese Products
Map the Mobile Road Ahead (April 29, 2001)
- Collect, Compare,
Choose: The 3Cs of Critical Web Use (April 15, 2001)
- Corporate
Websites Get a 'D' in PR (April 1, 2001)
- Stationary
Mobility (March 18, 2001)
- Retaining Key
Staff: What High-Tech Employees Say versus What They Do
(March 4, 2001)
- Success Rate:
The Simplest Usability Metric (February 18, 2001)
- Are Users
Stupid? (February 4, 2001)
- Usability
Metrics (January 21, 2001)
- Mobile Phones:
Europe's Next Minitel? (January 7, 2001)
- The Web in 2001:
Paying Customers (December 24, 2000)
- WAP Field
Study Findings (December 10, 2000)
- Security & Human
Factors (November 26, 2000)
- Drop-Down Menus: Use
Sparingly (November 12, 2000)
- Flash: 99%
Bad (October 29, 2000)
- Request
Marketing (October 15, 2000)
- Content
Creation for Average People (October 1, 2000)
- New Devices Augur
Decent Mobile User Experience (September 17, 2000)
- Regulatory
usability (September 3, 2000)
- Mailing list
usability (August 20, 2000)
- Why Doc Searls Doesn't Sell Any Books
(August 6, 2000)
- End of Web
design (July 23, 2000)
- WAP backlash
(July 9, 2000)
- The Network is the
User Experience: Microsoft's .NET announcement (June 25, 2000)
- Customers as
designers (June 11, 2000)
- Alertbox Five years
retrospective (May 28, 2000)
- Eyetracking
Study of Web Readers (May 14, 2000)
- Finally progress in
Internet client design (April 30, 2000)
- Reset and Cancel
buttons (April 16, 2000)
- The mud-throwing
theory of usability (April 2, 2000)
- Why you only need to test with 5 users
(March 19, 2000)
- Profit maximization
vs. user loyalty (March 5, 2000)
- Does the Internet
make us lonely? (February 20, 2000)
- Novice vs. expert
users (February 6, 2000)
- Saying No: How
to handle missing features (January 23, 2000)
- Is
navigation useful? (January 9, 2000)
- Predictions for the Web in 2000 (December 26,
1999)
- Voodoo
usability (December 12, 1999)
- Usability as barrier
to entry (November 28, 1999)
- When bad design
becomes the standard (November 14, 1999)
- Graceful
degradation of scalable Internet services (October 31, 1999)
- Prioritize: Good
content bubbles to the top (October 17, 1999)
- Ten good deeds
in web design (October 3, 1999)
- User-supportive
Internet architecture (September 19, 1999)
- Reputation
managers are finally happening (September 5, 1999)
- Do interface standards stifle design creativity?
(August 22, 1999)
- Video and streaming
media (August 8, 1999)
- Metcalfe's Law in
reverse (July 25, 1999)
- Web research: Believe
the data (includes sidebar on affiliates
programs) (July 11, 1999)
- Content
integration (June 27, 1999)
- Disabled
accessibility: the pragmatic approach (June 13, 1999)
- The top ten
new mistakes of web design (May 30, 1999)
- Who commits the "Top
Ten Mistakes" in web design? (May 16, 1999)
- "Top Ten Mistakes"
revisited three years later (May 2, 1999)
- Stuck with old
browsers until 2003 (April 18, 1999)
- Intranet portals:
the corporate information infrastructure (April 4, 1999)
- URL as UI (March
21, 1999)
- Trust or
Bust: Communicating trustworthiness in web design (March 7, 1999)
- Details in study
methodology can make results irrelevant (February 21, 1999)
- Why people shop on the
Web (February 7, 1999)
- The difference between print design and Web
design (January 24, 1999)
- Give me your billions: Internet stock valuation
and future user characteristics (January 17, 1999)
- Collecting feedback
from users of a Web archive (reader challenge) (January 10, 1999)
- Predictions for the Web in 1999 (December 27,
1998)
- Bill Gates' shopping
list to build the Internet Desktop (December 13, 1998)
- The value of keeping
pages alive forever (November 29, 1998)
- 2D is better than
3D (November 15, 1998)
- Why Yahoo is
good (but may get worse) (November 1, 1998)
- Failure of
corporate websites (October 18, 1998)
- Personalization is
over-rated (October 4, 1998)
- Does Internet =
Web? (September 20, 1998)
- Microcontent: writing
headlines, page titles, and email subject lines (September 6, 1998)
- The end of legacy
media (newspapers, magazines, books, TV networks) (August 23, 1998)
- The Web usage
paradox: Why do people use something this bad? (August 9, 1998)
- Electronic books -
a bad idea (July 26, 1998)
- Impact of data
quality on the Web user experience (July 12, 1998)
- Should you outsource Web design?
(June 28, 1998)
- Fighting linkrot
(June 14, 1998)
- Micro-containers and
new distribution networks are an example of strategic thinking and the
coming Web patent bonanza (May 31, 1998)
- Using "greeked" layouts to test page templates (May 17,
1998)
- Cost of user
testing a website (May 3, 1998)
- Global Web:
Driving the international network economy (April 19, 1998)
- Nielsen's Law of Internet bandwidth: it
grows by 50% per year (April 5, 1998)
- The increasing conservatism of Web users
(March 22, 1998)
- Better than
Reality: A fundamental Internet principle (March 8, 1998)
- Tracking the growth of
a site (February 22, 1998)
- The Reputation
Manager (February 8, 1998)
- The case for micro-payments (January
25, 1998)
- Using link
titles to help users predict where they are going (January 11,
1998)
- Predictions for the
Web in 1998 (January 1, 1998)
- Changes in Web
usability since 1994 (December 1, 1997)
- Book review: Esther
Dyson's Release 2.0 gives strategic vision for the network
economy (November 15, 1997)
- The Tyranny of the Page: continued lack of decent navigation
support in Version 4 browsers (November 1, 1997)
- Functionality applets
vs. content applets: when to step outside the Web page (October 15, 1997)
- How people read
on the Web (October 1, 1997)
- Difference between intranet and Internet
design (September 15, 1997)
- Why advertising doesn't
work on the Web (except for classified ads which
are better online than in print) (September 1, 1997)
- Community is dead;
long live mega-collaboration (August 15, 1997)
- Loyalty on the Web;
how to use "frequent-browser
points" (August 1, 1997)
- Search usability
(July 15, 1997)
- Effective use of style sheets (July 1,
1997)
- Top ten mistakes of Web management
(June 15, 1997)
- The fallacy of atypical
examples like Yahoo, Wall St. Journal, Disney, and Amazon (June 1, 1997)
- The telephone is the
best metaphor for the Web (May 15, 1997)
- The difference
between Web design and GUI design (May 1, 1997)
- Do websites have increasing returns? (how
important is it to be a big site?) (April 15, 1997)
- Tech support tales
show that novice users have immense problems using the Internet (April 1,
1997)
- Be succinct: how to write for the Web (March
15, 1997)
- The need for download speed (March 1,
1997)
- TV vs. computers as
Web media (February 15, 1997)
- WebTV
usability review (February 1, 1997)
- Trends for the Web in
1997 (January 1997)
- Why frames
suck most of the time (December 1996)
- Marginalia of Web
design: page titles, colored text, and thumbnail images (November 1996)
- Web access for disabled
users (October 1996)
- The rise of the sub-site (September 1996)
- International
usability (August 1996)
- A review of Slate Magazine
(July 1996; comments on their redesign added August 16, 1996)
- How to write
inverted pyramids in cyberspace (June 1996)
- Top ten
mistakes of Web design (May 1996)
- The Web backlash of
1996 (April 1996)
- The Internet Desktop
(March 1996)
- In defense of paper
(February 1996)
- Trends for website survival in 1996: Relationships on the Web
(January 1996)
- Guidelines for multimedia on the Web
(December 1995)
- How much bandwidth
is enough? (November 1995)
- Who should you hire to
design your website? (October 1995)
- Trying to kill a meme
for the growth of the Web (September 1995)
- Directions for online
publishing and the five
generations of online services (August 1995)
- The future of Web browsers and their navigation support features
(July 1995)
- Warning against pitfalls in Java and HotJava user
interfaces (June 1995)
History of the Alertbox Column
- 1995: 50,000 page views on an annualized basis (actually 30,000 page views
in a 7-month period)
- 1996: 189,000 page views
- 1997: 576,000 page views (all of Useit.com received 826,000 page views)
- 1998: 2.0 million page views (all of Useit.com received 3.0 Mpv)
- 1999: 3.1 million page views (all of Useit.com received 4.7 Mpv)
- 2000: 5.8 Mpv for Alertbox and 9.0 Mpv for Useit
- 2001: predicted to be about 10 Mpv for Alertbox (13 Mpv for Useit)
In addition to the traffic numbers listed here, the Alertbox received about
2.3 million page downloads from PointCast (mainly in 1998). I have not counted
these pages as being traffic since I doubt that very many of the "pushed" pages
were actually seen by users.