NN/g has tested 42 users performing investment-oriented task on 20 company websites. Some of the results showed that:

- 70% of the users completed the tasks
- 35% of the users couldn't get a copy of the company's latest quarterly report
- 77% couldn't find the high/low share prices for an earlier quarter

Jakob Nielsen concludes that:

- Individual investors are intimidated by overly complex IR sections and need simple summaries of financial data.
- Professional investors are using other sources of financial information and just want management's visions about the company's future
- Both individual and professional investors want company background information and overview of recent news

If you can afford it, NN/g offer a 121 pages report with 65 design guidelines for improving IR usability.

Links:

• The article Investor Relations Website Design 

Henrik Olsen - February 18, 2003 - via Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox

See also: Tips and guidelines (95)  Sections (8) 

Usability News has tested the correlation between perceived usability and aesthetics.

The results showed that when the test participant where asked to predict the usability of a site, they ranked the site with balanced colours and layout highest.

However, user satisfaction reported after the sessions were related to successful navigation more than aesthetic appearance.

Links:

• The article Aesthetics and Usability: A Look at Color and Balance 

Henrik Olsen - February 12, 2003

See also: Emotional design (10)  Visual design (19) 

ResearchIndex is a scientific literature digital library that aims to improve the dissemination and feedback of scientific literature, and to provide improvements in functionality, usability, availability, cost, comprehensiveness, efficiency, and timeliness. ResearchIndex indexes Postscript and PDF research articles on the Web, and provides these features: o Reference linking o Citation context o Awareness and tracking o Related documents o Similar documents In particular it has a directory of computer science literature broken down into useful categories and a most cited feature.

Links:

• Computer Science Directory 
• ResearchIndex 

ben hyde - February 11, 2003

According to Jakob Nielsen, only 39% of the space of web site front pages is used for areas of user interest (when including browser tool bars and borders). In a study, the following use of browser real estate was found:

- Unused: 20%
- Navigation: 20%
- Content of interest to users: 20%
- Operating system and browser overhead: 19%
- Self-promotions (ads for the site's own stuff): 9%
- Welcome, logo, tagline, and other site identifications: 5%
- Filler (useless stock art, such as "smiling ladies"): 5%
- Advertisements: 2%

I especially like the "Filler (useless stock art, such as "smiling ladies")". This is properly what others would call "graphic design" or "branding" elements.

Links:

• The article Homepage real estate allocation 

Henrik Olsen - February 10, 2003 - via Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox Announcement List

See also: Home pages (9) 

"This exploratory study was conducted to determine whether participants used the breadcrumb trail as a navigational tool within a site. We found the overall usage of the breadcrumb in site navigation to be low. Breadcrumb users were not found to be more efficient than users who did not use the breadcrumb."

Links:

• Breadcrumb Navigation: An Exploratory Study of Usage 

Henrik Olsen - February 06, 2003 - via WebWord Weblog

See also: Navigation (63) 

Luc Carton discusses the ancient question about whether links should be blue and purple.

Findings from study of 100 top American retail sites showed that only 27% of the sites still use the standard blue colour for links. Moreover, 61% of the sites do not use different colours according to whether the links have been visited or not, and only 13% of them use the colour purple for visited links.

On account of this study, Carton concludes that the blue/purple standard no longer exists, and since the main characteristic of a link isn't the colour, but the underlining of the text, colour doesn't matter.

Links:

• The article Should hypertext links be blue and purple? 

Henrik Olsen - January 14, 2003

See also: Links (19) 

Jakob Nielsen has compiled his usability status for year 2002: "

Links:

• The article Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002 

Henrik Olsen - December 28, 2002

A Master's thesis on user behaviour in within-site web navigation, supervised by Terry Winograd. You can download the entire thesis, or access PDF versions of each chapter.

Links:

• Transitional Volatility in Web Navigation 
• Important Works for Web Navigation 

Dey Alexander - October 27, 2002

See also: Navigation (63) 

UIE learned that using a web site is a progressive process, where users are inadvertently filtered out at each stage, as they work to accomplish their goal. The stages act as a sieve. At the e-commerce sites studied, 66% of the purchase-ready shoppers dropped out at various stages in the process because of bad design, inadequate information, or wrong deliveries. By understanding these stages and how they work, we can learn a lot about building better sites.

Links:

• The article The customer sieve 

Henrik Olsen - October 17, 2002

See also: Navigation (63)  Shopping Carts (9)  E-commerce (27) 

Michael Bernard (et al.) has examined reading speed, perception of legibility, and preference of the most popular fonts used on the web. The study showed that:

- There was no significant difference in legibility between the fonts studied at 10-, 12- and 14-point sizes
- Generally Times and Arial was faster in reading time than Courier, Schoolbook, and Georgia
- Arial, Courier, and Georgia were perceived as the most legible fonts
- Verdana was the most preferred font, while Times was the least preferred

The authors conclude that Verdana appears to be the best overall font choice. Besides being the most preferred, it was read fairly quickly and was perceived as being legible.

Links:

• The article A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which Size and Type is Best? 
• The article A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which is Best and When? 

Henrik Olsen - October 14, 2002

See also: Text (24)