List of home page usability guidelines

1. The items on the home page are clearly focused on users’ key tasks (”featuritis” has been avoided).
2. If the site is large, the home page contains a search input box.
3. Product categories are provided and clearly visible on the homepage.
4. Useful content is presented on the home page or within one click of the home page.
5. The home page shows good examples of real site content.
6. Links on the home page begin with the most important keyword (e.g. “Sun holidays” not “Holidays in the sun”).
7. There is a short list of items recently featured on the homepage, supplemented with a link to archival content.
8. Navigation areas on the home page are not over-formatted and users will not mistake them for adverts.
9. The value proposition is clearly stated on the home page (e.g. with a tagline or welcome blurb). Read more…
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In the age of social media, user generated content you can’t rely solely on bots and other automatically gathered numbers to collect data on your website success. You have to find out what your users like and what they actually say about you, or at least how often. There ale plenty of ways to find out, these are the most obvious:

bookmarks on delicious
A site or page with a few hundred or thousand of bookmarks on Delicious can’t be that bad, can it? On the other hand a site that has none can’t be that successful can it?

bookmarks elsewhere
While it is not that hard to pay some “SEO India” service to submit you to Delicious etc. It’s still far more likely that a site is a good one if it’s only popular on Delicious but also has bookmarks elsewhere. I’m sometimes surprised how many people bookmark my articles on sites do not even know of.

social news submissions
Do really thinks getting tens of thousands people visit your site is the ultimate proof of being popular? Well, it isn’t, it just proves you’re main stream, political correct and have the best girls on your site while using Apple. Everything else gets buried. If Digg front page popularity reflects real popularity then why is McCain the republican candidate and not Ron Paul? In contrast the number of submissions tend to allow a better assessment unless of course the “SEO India” service is at work. When not, you can see that popular pages get submitted all over the place. Every SEO knows that. You can submit the best SEO relates resource and it won’t get on Digg frontpage due to the “bury brigade” there, the it will get submitted to Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Mixx. My own SEO blog has been submitted to Mixx over 70 times in 10 months and I did it only a few times myself. Read more…

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What is usability

Is your web site usable? There are several definitions for usability, but basically the following 4 characteristics can be considered usable:

* Quick and easy to learn;
* Efficient to use;
* Allows rapid recovery from errors;
* Easy to remember;

Does your product or web site have the above characteristics? Usability increases benefits for both parties: the User (potential customers) and the Provider (yourself). Read more…

• 500 web usability guidelines
• Social Media metrics