Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed

jakob nielsen marie tahir

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.

Genres designusabilitynonfictiontechnologywebreferencebusinesswebsite designcomputerstechnical

315 pages, Paperback

First published November 15,2001

Literary awards

independent publisher book award (ippy),

This edition

Format: 315 pages, Paperback
Published: October 1, 2001 by New Riders Publishing
ISBN: 9780735711020
ASIN: 073571102X
Language: English

About the author

jakob nielsen

Jakob Nielsen is a leading web usability consultant. He holds a Ph.D. in human-computer interaction from the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen. He is also the principal of the Nielsen Norman Group which he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman (former VP of research at Apple Computer). Before starting NNG in 1998 he was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer.

Nielsen founded the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. He holds 79 United States patents, mainly on ways of making the Web easier to use.

Nielsen has also given his five quality components of Usability Goals, which are: Learnability, Efficiency, Memorability, Errors (as in low error rate), Satisfaction.