While there is a plethora of books available that provide tips on Web design, most authors leave a significant gap between the theory and practice--a gap that is left up to the reader to fill. Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed boldly steps into that gap with specific observations and suggestions backed with solid quantitative analysis. This book focuses only on home page design as the most important point of presence for any Web site.

This definitive work is coauthored by Jakob Nielsen--the accepted industry expert in Web usability--and Marie Tahir, an expert in user profiling. Their collaboration has produced a guide of such rare practical benefit that Web designers will likely wear out their first copy scouring the pages to savor every last morsel of wisdom.

The book begins with a chapter of precise guidelines that serve as a checklist of the features and functionality to include on your home page. The specifics found in categories such as "revealing content through examples" and "graphic design" will quickly hook you and whet your appetite for more. These guidelines are followed up with hard statistics and an examination of the ominous Jakob's Law: "Users spend most of their time on other sites than your site." Here you'll find some interesting statistics about how various conventions like search, privacy policies, and logos are used.

All this leads up to the showcase element of the book--a systematic deconstruction of 50 of the most popular home pages on the Web. The authors painstakingly pick apart each in an uncompromising autopsy of usability. Each site is graphically analyzed for its use of real estate and summarized with the frankness only found from true experts. Then each section of the home page is bulleted and analyzed for potential improvements.

It's a bold move to offer a critique of industry-standard Web sites such as Yahoo, CNET, and eBay, but the authors have done such a fine job that the designers of those sites will surely make reading this book a high priority. For the rest of us, this work will serve as an invaluable gospel. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: Design guidelines, convention usage, screen real estate, navigation, content presentation, search facilities, links, graphics and animation, advertising, news, customization, and customer feedback.


From Library Journal
Nielsen, dogmatic don of web usability, and his strategy director Tahir believe that a company needs a well-designed homepage to succeed online. They provide 113 brief usability guidelines that lead into a chapter on homepage statistics, giving readers an idea of conventions to follow or break. The homepages of 50 major web sites, from About.com to Yahoo.com, are then pictured and critiqued in terms of those recommendations and statistics. A useful resource for both novice and professional web designers; recommended for all libraries.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Book News, Inc.
Nielson and Tahir (web usability experts) offer tips on how to design a web homepage that elicits a favorable first impression. First, they analyze guidelines and statistics on what makes a site attractive and usable. Next, reviews of 50 websites illustrate solutions to design challenges, emphasizing both what's wrong with certain designs, and what works well. Topics include general issues (links, navigation, search, graphic design, URLs, advertising, welcomes, customization, tools and task shortcuts, and others) and statistics (download time, basic page layout, fundamental page design elements, navigation, typography, graphics and multimedia, and advertising). Heavily illustrated in color. Oversize: 10x10.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


Book Description
The book begins with a briefing on Jakob's web usability principles, themselves culled from years of research. The 50 sites fall under such categories as Fortune 500 Sites, Highest-Traffic Sites, and E-Commerce Sites. The content is simply presented: Four book pages are devoted to each homepage. The first page is a clean screenshot of the site's homepage (for readers to make their own, unbiased judgments), followed by a page that explains the site's purpose and summarizes its success--or failure--at usabilty. The third and fourth pages are devoted to crtiques, where Jakob and Marie present no-holds-barred commentary for specific usability practices, as well as suggestions for improvement. Although only the homepage of each site is analyzed, many of the critiques can be applied to overall website design.


From the Publisher
Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed is renowned web usability evangelist Jakob Nielsen and research partner Marie Tahir applying web usability metrics--as well as some very interesting commentary backed up with quantitative research and analysis--to some of the most high-profile sites on the web. If Nielsen's groundbreaking Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity is an entertaining academic lecture-hall experience, Homepage Usability is pure field trip. What works? What doesn't? Why? And how can it be improved? Find out here. And apply what you learn from these quite-real-world examples, beautifully presented in a full-color, oversized (10” x 10”) format...


From the Back Cover
In a world of information overload and dying dot.coms, your homepage must grab the attention of visitors, tell them where they are, and let them know where they can go. Does your site pass the test? Homepage Usability is all about making that first impression. Is your tag line effective? Can visitors find your search box? How difficult is the page to navigate? What percentage of your homepage is devoted to actual content? By putting 50 of today's top sites to the test, web usability experts Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir show you what makes for goodmdand not so goodmdfirst impressions. This book contains hundreds of examples that you can employ on your own homepage. Apply the best. Avoid the worst.


About the Author
Dr. Jakob Nielsen Jakob is principal of Nielsen Norman Group; he was previously a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer. Nielsen's Alertbox column about web usability has been published on the Internet since 1995 (http://www.useit.com). Nielsen has been called "the world's leading expert on web usability" (U.S. News & World Report), "the guru of Web page usability" (The New York Times), and he "knows more about what makes web sites work than anyone else on the planet" (Chicago Tribune). Marie Tahir Marie is Director of Strategy at Nielsen Norman Group, where she has focused on B2B and B2C user experience redesign. She previously managed the Human Factors group at Intuit, Inc., where she introduced and taught user centered design methodology and oversaw the user experience of the TurboTax, ProSeries, and QuickenLoans product lines. Prior to Intuit, Marie was at Lotus Development Corp., where she pioneered field research and user profiling methodology and was responsible for the usability of the SmartSuite product line. She is the co-author of "Bringing the Users' Work to Us: Usability Roundtables at Lotus Development" in Wixon and Ramey's Field Methods Casebook for Software Design.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Yo, web designers: didn't your mom ever tell you about making a good first impression? You wouldn't know it from some home pages. You can build a home page that welcomes visitors, helps them achieve their goals, and effectively communicates your message. Homepage Usability will show you how.

You may know Jakob Nielsen, the author of Designing Web Usability, the bestselling web usability guide ever. You know Marie Tahir's usability work if you've ever tried TurboTax, which darned near makes income taxes easy. Here, they critique 50 leading sites -- providing powerful takeaway lessons on every page.

No punches are pulled. Regarding Drugstore.com: "One of the key values of this site is its low prices on prescription drugs delivered to your home. However, the large and banal promotional item overshadows this value" and "the description of [Primal Elements] is so silly that it's unreadable." Judge for yourself: All the home pages are shown full size, in full color.

You may not always like the authors' comments, but they're consistently well thought out and based on extensive research. If Homepage Usability helps you transform even 10 percent more visits into sales, it'll be the best e-commerce news you've had all year. (Bill Camarda)

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer with nearly 20 years' experience in helping technology companies deploy and market advanced software, computing, and networking products and services. He served for nearly ten years as vice president of a New Jersey-based marketing company, where he supervised a wide range of graphics and web design projects. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks For Dummies®, Second Edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Quick. You have 10 seconds to show your face to the world. What does your homepage say? In a world of information overload and dying dot.coms, your homepage must grab the attention of visitors, tell them where they are, and let them know where they can go. Does your site pass the test? Homepage Usability is all about making that first impression. Is your tag line effective? Can visitors find your search box? How difficult is the page to navigate? What percentage of your homepage is devoted to actual content? By putting 50 of today's top sites to the test, web usability experts jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir show you what makes for good -- and not so good -- first impressions. This book contains hundreds of examples that you can employ on your own homepage. Apply the best. Avoid the worst.

SYNOPSIS

Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed is renowned web usability evangelist Jakob Nielsen and research partner Marie Tahir applying web usability metrics—as well as some very interesting commentary backed up with quantitative research and analysis—to some of the most high-profile sites on the web. If Nielsen's groundbreaking Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity is an entertaining academic lecture-hall experience, Homepage Usability is pure field trip. What works? What doesn't? Why? And how can it be improved? Find out here. And apply what you learn from these quite-real-world examples, beautifully presented in a full-color, oversized (10" x 10") format.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Nielsen, dogmatic don of web usability, and his strategy director Tahir believe that a company needs a well-designed homepage to succeed online. They provide 113 brief usability guidelines that lead into a chapter on homepage statistics, giving readers an idea of conventions to follow or break. The homepages of 50 major web sites, from About.com to Yahoo.com, are then pictured and critiqued in terms of those recommendations and statistics. A useful resource for both novice and professional web designers; recommended for all libraries. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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