247 Web Usability Guidelines By Userfocus

Umut M. — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:01:04 +0000

Userfocus, a consultancy & training company on website usability, is sharing 247 web usability guidelines for creating more consistently & better.

The guidelines are very well-categorized like homepage, forms & data entry, navigation, search & more.

Here are some examples:

Text boxes on forms are the right length for the expected answer.
The home page shows good examples of real site content.
The layout helps focus attention on what to do next.
Search results are clear, useful and ranked by relevance.

All the guidelines are also provided as an Excel workbook, where you can go through a website & check the ones that are ok.

Special Downloads:
Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets

Advertisements:
Professional XHTML Admin Template ($15 Discount With The Code: WRD.)
Psd to Xhtml
SSLmatic – Cheap SSL Certificates (from $19.99/year)

Clixpy: A Practical Web Service To Capture User Activities (50 Free Promo Codes)

Umut M. — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:05:25 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

As designers & developers, we try to make a website easier-to-use for end-users. This can be building a less-complicated system, using different sizes & colors according to the priority of the content, etc.

But, whatever we do, we need to findout if these work or not. Because sometimes, users do the unexpected & surprise you with "how the easy-to-use website you created" is not easy for them.

Clixpy, a very easy to install & use web usability testing tool, is a great helper for finding out how users browse a website. It does this by recording the activities of:

mouse movements
clicks
scrollings
form inputs

A statistics application can give you the browsing route of a visitor. But, it does not provide what happens at that route & why readers choose that route, which actually are the vital questions. And this is what Clixpy offers.

How to install & use it?

A JavaScript code inserted into a website’s footer is automatically detected by Clixpy & tracking/recording starts (will be great if it becomes possible to limit the websites that can use the code to prevent unexpected usages).

From the admin interface of the application, you can filter the sessions recorded by domain, date or the status (new captures, atched ones, etc.).

Before viewing a session, you can have a strong idea about the details of it as Clixpy displays the number of pageviews, which pages are viewed, duration & user + browser details captured. It also enables you to save & take notes on any capture to analyze them later.

By clicking on any captured session, Clixpy presents you the same experience the reader has on the website.

Also, you can define a limit on the capturing process like "capture first 20 sessions" or "stop the whole capture feature anytime".

What to expect as a result?

After installing Clixpy & capturing the sessions of your visitors, it is time to analyze the results. Simply:

watch the sessions
see which features your visitors find difficult & easy to use
take notes
& take action, fix the parts that you can offer a better user experience. And, for a double check, re-capture those webpages with Clixpy to see if the updates really work.

50 free promo codes with 100 captures each

Clixpy is offering 50 free promo codes to WebResourcesDepot readers for tasting the application. Each promo code enables you to capture 100 sessions. To get one, besides any comment you might have, simply mention "I want a discount code" in the comments & one promo code will be e-mailed to you within a day.

All promo codes are now requested. But don’t worry, you can always play with Clixpy’s demo to see how it works.