Is Your Site Still Getting It Wrong? See What Nielsen has to Say on the Subject
Usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, posted Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005 today. It reinforces many of the views that I hold regarding website design in the post “pretty-is-better” era.
His number one design mistake is “Legibility Problems”: designers using small fonts and low contrast type to background colors. I have, and do, work with clients to make font sizes larger as they are here on my site but all too many want the fonts to be the same as all the other sites on the internet. Just because everyone does it doesn’t make it right. Older users and people with reduced vision should not be excluded from the internet and their money is as good as anyone else’s.
One point that I take small issue with is Mistake “4. Content That’s Not Written for the Web”. The issue is his comment that content should be short. It should be scannable and to the point (not fluffy) but length can actually work to your advantage if you are providing valuable information that requires detail.
From a marketing standpoint if people are reading well written focused copy regarding your product or service benefits they will keep reading until they decide that they have either had enough or that they agree and want to proceed to buy. That being said, keep paragraphs short, answer questions that your target audience want answers to and make the copy lead to the goal of the site.
Another point that I have partial issue with is “9. Frozen Layouts with Fixed Page Widths”. For aesthetic reasons one may opt to fix a site width to around 760pixels wide for screen. It can make paragraphs shorter in width and therefore more easily read. Regarding Nielson’s concern with printing on European A4 paper and having pages cut off, that can be addressed by the correct use of a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) for print. This issue will also resolve somewhat when Microsoft Internet Explorer finally implements support for the max-width and min-width property (CSS 2.1). This implementation would allow for designers to set an aboslute maximum for liquid or flexible designs so that you don’t have a paragraph going across an entire page on a 1600X1200 monitor.
Overall, I agree with this latest incarnation of Nielsen’s Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005. Let me know what you think about this issue and drop me a line.
December 16th, 2005 at 1:14 am
I should wear my glasses but they are not critical. However, I am sensitive to small fonts and low contrast, more so that the average teenager (I am not a teenager, my oldest son is months away from being one). The default Wordpress template squishes text together with a negative letter-spacing value (probably -1px) which makes it very hard for me to read and I know a couple of people who have used that template.
I am long-winded so it is difficult for me to write compactly but I am getting better.
December 16th, 2005 at 1:21 am
Jules,
You might want to wear your glasses but I find that the larger fonts nice to read and since I do work on Linux boxes from time to time it is almost impossible to read the smaller fonts the way that Konquerer or Firefox under KDE render type. I think that 95% font size is as small as you want to go and use ems from there. If a site must use px, I don’t go any smaller than 13px as it is just more pleasing on the eyes.