Book review: <I>Homepage Usability: 55 Websites Deconstructed</i> by Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir

 

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By Steve Malone

Posted on 16 Dec 2002 at 16:47

Unless they are coming from a search engine, the likelihood is that the first landfall for a visitor to your web site is the home page. It's your shop window and only if it is enticing will people be tempted to step inside and investigate all the goodies on offer.

Common sense you might think. But its surprising how many websites mess it up through poor navigation, assumptions about the visitor and plain bad writing. Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir claim to have seen a good few home pages in their time and set out the do's and dont's of making your home page both inviting and usable.

The book is divided into two parts. The first 53 pages of this glossily laid out book cover usability guidelines for the designer followed by some stats to back it up. The other 200 odd pages are devoted to a detailed anotated analysis of 50 popular websites ranging from the Florida Department of Revenue to IBM. This is one with full page displays of a website with clearly numbered features and corresponding commentary.

Although generally US biased some UK sites like NewsNow and the BBC do get a look in. However, the aim is not to examine the world's most popular sites - hence the extremely usable Google doesn't get a mention, but to draw attention to the way their sites are implemented - for good and bad.

The first part is packed with good advice and is worth a read by anyone interested in making their site usable. The second half frankly seems a bit spun out and veers towards the nit picking sometimes. For that reason you may find yourself wanting to skip through some of the later analyses as it gets a bit repetitious which is a shame as you might overlook a gem.

Therefore its hard to recommend spending the £30.99 rrp asking price. The Amazon price of around half that is more like it. Even so, its more the kind of thing you will find in the reception of a trendy web design studio than devoured by usability devotees.

Homepage Usability: 55 Websites Deconstructed by Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir,
New Riders, 2001,
£30.99
326 pages
ISBN 073571102X