Jakob Nielsen: The Guru Of Web Page Usability

Who Is Jakob Nielsen?

Jakob Nielsen is a leading web usability consultant, author, and authority in human-computer interaction. Jakob has been been called:

“The king of usability”
(Internet Magazine)
“The guru of Web page usability”
(The New York Times)
“The next best thing to a true time machine”
(USA Today)
“The world’s leading expert on Web usability”
(U.S. News & World Report)
“One of the top 10 minds in small business”
(FORTUNE Small Business)
“Knows more about what makes Web sites work than anyone else on the planet”
(Chicago Tribune, March 6, 2000)
“One of the world’s foremost experts in Web usability”
(Business Week)
“The reigning guru of Web usability”
(FORTUNE)
“The usability Pope”
(Wirtschaftswoche Magazine, Germany)

Making Your Web Site Work.

Eminent Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen offers his insights on how to make the Web work:

“If a Web site is not easy to use, people simply leave. But if a camera is not easy to use, people will figure it out because they hold a physical object in their hand that they’ve invested in,” says Nielsen.

Usability is often seen merely as a nice add-on for most software products, but with the Web it has become a critical success factor – a factor that is often widely disregarded.

“What we actually know from our studies is that the average user experience on the Web is that of failure,” says Nielsen.

Although the dot com crash was due to a variety of factors, Nielsen says when people have a bad experience on a commerce site they leave.

“People don’t spend most of their time trying to do new things. They will return to Web sites that they have found to be at least reasonably easy to use and go back, again and again to those sites.”

What Can A Webmaster Do?

The design expert says that there are two things that a site can do to improve its usability.

“You can run a very simple user test in three days… just get some real users in.”

The second method is professional analysis, which requires an expert with many years of experience to assess a Web site’s design and structure. As a professional web design firm, our programmers provide over 13 years of professional expertise. Our portfolio speaks for itself.

But many Web site managers still neglect to ensure the usability of their product, for multiple reasons.

“First is that they just neglect the entire issue because they think their own Web site is easy to use because they designed it so they don’t understand the need for usability testing,” says Nielsen.

“The second reason is that even if they recognize the need for usability, they think ‘we’ve got to bring in a team of five Ph. Ds, build a special laboratory with one way mirrors and test fifty users’ – no you don’t.”

The Web Is Getting Worse.

Since the Internet surfing experience exploded onto the scene, Nielsen thinks the Web has detiorated in quality.

“It has mainly gotten worse because the complexity has gone up in terms of all the things that can now be done — the number of Web sites, the number of things people are trying to accomplish on the Web.”

“In the old days is was just ‘let me write an article’ and the Web browser is actually fairly good at allowing you to read an article and link to the next article,” he added.[1]

The Solution

As internet users are increasingly impatient and intolerable, new methods of web development technology must be implemented to satisfy the present needs of viewers. Our firm partners-up with each and every one of our clients to ensure proper usability, use of navigation and traffic. We focus on generating results. When it comes to web design, SEO and marketing, we focus on quality—it’s that simple.

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[1] Marks, Peter. “Web usability guru pitches better design in Asia.” CNN World (2001): n. pag. Web. 18 Jan 2011. .