Editor's Pick in Design Principles, April 2005
Need to ensure that your website is accessible? Let Alan Cole teach you how to avoid dependence on particular hardware and software.

Editor's Pick in Design Principles, March 2005
Navigational direction never hurt anyone. In fact, knowing where you are going is half the battle of getting there. So why not create a map for your site visitors?

Editor's Pick in Web Promotion
Website owners should realise that by optimising their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimise it for their site visitors...

Throughout 2004 the number of web enabled portable devices boomed. By “portable devices" I mean PDAs and smart phones. What does this mean for you? Well it depends whether or not you care about your visitors’ experience - you build your website for visitors so you really should!...

Take the “Easy Test” to see if your website is as visitor friendly as it should be! Websites often fail to produce the desired results. This can be because visitors find them too hard to understand or navigate. Here are some potential usability problems to avoid...

There are numerous articles and sites that advise on how to improve websites for search engine optimisation. SEO is, of course, vital for increasing the number of visitors to a website. However, never forget that it is visitors that turn into customers and make the money...

Not so very long ago, it was agreed that five to eight users was enough for a good usability test. Somehow, this idea achieved mythic status. We believed it. We preached it to everyone who would listen. It survived in areas where it had been disproved, and was introduced into new situations...

Your website's navigation tools and techniques should basically give users the answer to three questions:
Where am I?
Where have I been? and
Where can I go?

Your site visitors make all the choices when it comes to browsing the Web. No other medium gives users, readers or customers such control over their own experience. TV, radio and print present information in a very linear, controlled way...

A few years back, we conducted one of the most painful usability studies in the history of our research. We learned some really important things, but I'm not sure the users in that study will ever forgive us...