Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for February 19 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/application-mistakes.html
			
Summary:
Application usability is enhanced when (a) users know how to operate the
UI and (b) the UI guides them through the workflow.
Violating common guidelines prevents both.
				
----------------------------------

Usability Week 2008 conference

  > New York, April 7-12
  > London, May 19-24
  > San Francisco, June 16-21
  > Melbourne, July 21-26

In-depth training:
  > 3-day Intensive Camp: Usability in Practice
  > 3-day Immersion: Tog on Interaction Design

Specialized full-day tutorials:

  > Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability
  > Application Usability (2 days)
  > Intranet Usability (2 days)
  > Websites That Sell
  > E-Mail Newsletter Usability
  > Writing for the Web
  > B2B

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

----------------------------------

APPLICATION DESIGN AWARD: CALL FOR ENTRIES

The application design contest will award the 10 best functionality-driven
user experiences of the year. Think you designed a good application UI?
Submit it for the award!

Submission rules:

  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/applications/design

Deadline: NEXT FRIDAY, February 29

----------------------------------

INTERNET BANDWIDTH: 10 years old prediction continues to hold

Last week I upgraded my home Internet connection to 16 Mbps. I took the
opportunity to update my article from 1998 about the expected growth in
Internet connection speeds for home users.

It's remarkable how closely the new data points fit the regression curve
on the old chart.

The growth in my bandwidth from 1996 to 2008 has been a factor 122, which
is 49% per year - incredibly close to the 50% I predicted in my 1998
article:

  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980405.html

I also think I was proven right that it was necessary to design for
low-bandwidth users until 2003. It may even have been later than 2003 when
it was realistically a good idea to use multimedia on the Web (YouTube
started in 2005).

Anyway, even today, please do remember that Web pages should download
within 1 second for optimal flow: keep making snappy pages.

----------------------------------

WHY PEOPLE SHOP ONLINE	

The Pew Foundation has released the findings from a new survey (conducted
late 2007), where they asked American Internet users why they shop online.

Four reasons stated (percentages are people who agreed or strongly
agreed):

  78% Shopping online is convenient
  77% Best place to buy items that are hard to find
  68% Shopping online saves me time
  49% Best place to find bargains

Compare these findings with the top four reasons given for shopping online
in a 1999 survey:

  83% Easy to place an order
  63% Large selection of products
  63% Cheaper prices
  52% Faster service and delivery

The four reasons in 2007 are exactly the same as they were in 1999
(adjusting for different wordings from the two survey operators). The
percentages are slightly different, and cheaper prices have swapped place
with saving time:

  (*) Web prices are less favorable now than they were during the first
dot-com bubble. Bubble 2.0 doesn't focus on e-commerce, so there aren't
gullible investors available to subsidize shipping costs and such. (Now,
the gullible investors throw away their money chasing advertising-focused
schemes to offer services for free instead of selling things cheaply.)

  (*) E-commerce sites and fulfillment operators are much more efficient
now, leading to greater savings in time for users.

It's striking how LITTLE USER ATTITUDES CHANGED during 8 years when the
Internet grew by 3,042%.

1999 survey:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990207.html

2007 survey:
  > http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/237/report_display.asp

The new report makes much of the fact that 75% of respondents say that
they "don't like giving my credit card number or personal information
online."

This is where we have to remember that this is ONLY A SURVEY and not real
observational research.

Surveys can only discover WHAT USERS *SAY*, NOT WHAT THEY *DO*.

In fact, there are solutions that dramatically strengthen the security of
credit card numbers online, but empirically most users don't bother
spending 2 minutes to sign up for these services.

Also, in observing users shop, we find that they don't mind entering
credit card numbers or "reasonable" amounts of personal information, once
they have satisfied themselves that it's a credible site and decided to
buy something there.

We do see problems when sites ask for personal information prematurely: at
a stage when the user hasn't yet decided to do business with the site.
Most B2B sites make this mistake.

Also, users get annoyed when it takes forever to complete a site's
formalities: they may abandon the shopping cart and they are definitely
less likely to return.

Don't spend your budget beefing up security (unless it's bad, of course).
Invest in making your site more trustworthy, and in less laborious
checkout and registration. That'll do much more good for your conversion
rate.

Business-to-business usability guidelines:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/b2b

How to enhance the credibility of your site:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/ecommerce/trust.html

Smoother checkout and less arduous registration:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/ecommerce/checkout.html