Common sense and usability rules

There are a lot of best practices when it comes to online content and usability. Some of them are best, and some of them are merely practices.

Three “practices” that have made it through to corporate marketing and web departments are: making users scroll is bad; opening links in a new window is good; lists (and secondary navigation) of more than 5-7 items are bad.

Just don’t buy, but can’t say why

Nielsen’s post, Alertbox: Middle-Aged Users’ Declining Web Performance has me muttering under my breath.

He says:

“Between the ages of 25 and 60, the time users need to complete website tasks increases by 0.8% per year.”

Press releases, templates, activity over passivity

Todd Defren, Shift Communications, has posted the company’s updated social media press release.

Helping companies structure their online content is always a good thing. It’s quite generous of Shift to offer the template for free.

One of the template’s strengths is it’s using the medium’s innovative structuring potential and moving beyond the metaphor of the *page* (avoiding using the web as a kind of backlit book).

This means something. I’m just not sure what.

So I was talking to a useability expert the other day. He told me he’d finally got round to watching Citizen Kane, but couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Could I enlighten him?

Me: “Well, for starters, what about the groundbreaking deep focus cinematography?”

Him: “Yeah, see – I was watching it on an Ipod Nano, so I didn’t get any of that…”

Undead on the InterWeb

In his article last Monday, Billy Thompson, BBC Technology columnist, griped that:

“[...] I am starting to think that anyone who can’t follow the step-by-step guide to updating their Outlook account settings really shouldn’t be using e-mail at all …” (Lessons for the hi-tech future, BBC News, 261107)

If that holds for the user, it holds for the provider. So, substitute the bold words Outlook account settings and e-mail in his quote with the words *corporate websites*.

It’s not just end-users who don’t RTM. Companies with online presence don’t follow basic instructions either, such as reviewing and updating their websites.