What if Jakob Nielsen had a blog?

Bright SEO career prospects could dim

I am pessimistic about the long-term prospects for SEO jobs, because the basics of search engine optimization are fairly simple and ought to be part of the core competency of anybody who makes a living in Web design, Internet marketing, or writing for the Web. You shouldn't need a special consultant to make a Web site that follows simple guidelines. Of course, I have been trying to teach people to write for the Web for 10 years already, ever since we discovered the main guidelines in 1997. And most sites still get it wrong. So maybe I am wrong when I predict that Internet marketers will stop being clueless in 10 years. In any case, even if most sites eventually learn how to do their own SEO, it will be good for your career to have spent several years working with the most effective component of Internet marketing. You will be able to broaden your scope and take on other duties, based on your evolving knowledge of what works on the Web and what customers want (they want what they search for!).

http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/specialreports/itemployment/0,39055182,62033662,00.htm

Discussion in Wikipedia Entry

I don't know who added the following statement, but it is false: "while at the same time his "fan club" has eroded steadily"

The way I measure the size of my fan club is by the number of subscribers to my email newsletter, the Alertbox. This number has shown steady growth year after year. The subscriber count for July 11, 2007 is 12,667 higher than it was on July 11, 2006.

A more hardnosed business-oriented way of measuring the "fan club" is the number of attendees at my annual usability conference. This number is also up: the conference gets bigger every year. However, paying attendees are more an indication of the size of the customer base than the "fan club", as quoted on the Wikipedia page.

Since it's free to subscribe to the email newsletter, the trend in subscriptions is a better estimate of the "fan club", so if the Wikipedia article wants to comment on the "fan club", it should go by the real empirical data and not some hearsay.

Since I understand that Wikipedia's policy is that one is not supposed to edit one's own biography, I have not made this change, but as long as the false info is on the page it is certainly not up to any reasonable editorial standards.

Talk page on Wikipedia

Web Gurus with Gross Sites

Jakob Nielsen: He’s one of the most recognized names in the world of web design advice. But I can’t stand his website.

Yes, his use of large, Verdana font and lack of graphics means the site loads quickly and old people with vision problems can read the text easily. But I’m sorry; the thing is just plain ugly.

And for me, I don’t like spending time on ugly sites. For one thing, I don’t respect them, and I tend to doubt their credibility. When I first found Nielsen’s site a couple years ago, by searching for articles on writing for the web, I found his text and data to be crowded, unscannable, and confusing. I thought the 1998 look and feel — the nasty yellow bar across the top being the only color on the page — meant the content was also outdated. Still, because at the time there was a paucity of information on how to write for the web, I slogged through. Only when a prospective employer mentioned Nielsen with reverence did I get the clue that the guy is considered to be the authority on many issues of usability and standards.

Seriously, Mr. Nielsen: I respect your adherence to purity of content. But yellow, pale pink, and that hideous web-blue — these colors do not go together. Don’t tell me your web URL in the title of your homepage. And please, Verdana looks like schoolbook text. It’s awful and big and just stinks of stupidity. The web is a visual medium; you have to respect that, too!

Web Gurus with Gross Sites  by Eliot on Red Inked

Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015

Here's an archtype example of getting in the way of the sale -- literally -- as performed by Jakob Nielsen. Well, somebody at the Nielsen Norman Group. As the person who sent this in to me stated:

So I get this link on a newsletter that informs me that Dr. Nielsen will be holding usability conferences around the globe - one in a city only a few hours drive from where I live. Clicking on the link 2/3rds the way down the newsletter, I find myself on a nice, concise and easy to navigate page that provided me with all the information I need.

Sold on the idea of attending, I see and click on one of the links on the left column menu under each conference city entitled "Registration" for the locale of my desire - only to find that I can't register.

Meaning, when you click on them, you get the ubiquitous basic authentication username and password dialog with no instructions on how to enter said page - meaning, it would appear why they want you to register for their conference, they've thrown down a frustrating step into the process that forces a user to come back some other day.

I suspect this occurred by not testing all the links on a machine that wasn't already authenticated. Even if this encumbrance occurs for some other reason, not the best way to show one's expertise in the area of usability.

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-mistakes-in-web-design-1995-2015.html

Ozchi keynote: User centred design: is it working

We’ve got to stop treating people like they are stupid, because they’re actually not. Developers are not stupid. I think Jakob Nielsen and Alan Cooper have done our whole field a disservice by peddling the fact that developers are stupid…They’re working within what they know, we work within the stuff we know and nobody ever knows everything. Nobody goes to work to do a bad days work. More than any community I’ve seen, our community treats them like they're dumb.

I think that Jakob Nielsen’s stuff should be removed from the galaxy…all those bloody rules that don’t fit in any context and lure people into a feeling that you can just get these rules and get it right.

http://www.maadmob.net/donna/blog/archives/000738.html

What does Jakob Nielsen have to do with the current state of the web?

Jakob proudly points to an article in The New York Times on Google's acquisition of YouTube, where he is quoted, "What does a video storage service have to do with search?" Suggesting he doesn't appreciate the reasoning behind the takeover.

This sentence reveals two drastic oversimplifications. Taking the second, first, Google is as much an advertising company as it is a search company. In fact, without advertising, there would be no search. Google's true genius is not in the search engine, but in figuring out how to extract massive value from that search engine, with a brilliant approach to advertising that plays directly to the web's strengths (Think "long tail," think algorithmic, think decentralized, think results-driven, etc.)

http://www.peterme.com/archives/000794.html

Non-stop interruption

"The profusion of communications channels is definitely harmful for productivity, because it leads to more interruptions," says Jakob Nielsen, an expert on information technology usability. "For people doing knowledge work the most highly paid employees every time you are interrupted it takes 5-15 minutes to fully recapture your train of thought and get back to being completely immersed in your main task."

Gulf News

For Web-Design Expert, Ease of Use And Clarity Are Essential for Firms

Certainly you can have blogs that function as newsletters, updated on a regular basis. But they don't tend to do that. They don't tend to have that same sort of publishing discipline: having a publication schedule and surveying this week's or this day's events. They could, of course, but they don't tend to.

Wall Street Journal

Use of Ajax development grows despite controversy

Ajax brings together Asynchronous Javascript, XML, HTML/XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets and the Document Object Model. However, it uses them in new ways, some of which go against the founding conventions of the web.

In particular, Ajax can “break” the back button that returns the user to the unmodified page. For this reason Ajax has provoked strong opposition from web usability advocates such as Jakob Nielsen.

Computer Weekly

If This Column Were a Web Site, This Would Be Its Home Page

Nielsen's team gave users a variety of online tasks, such as going to the U.S. Postal Service site to find the cost of sending a postcard to China. The tasks were completed 66 percent of the time -- up from 40 percent in the late 1990s.

Nielsen released a follow-up report this week on sites catering to business and found their average success rate was lower than it was for consumer sites -- 58 percent overall. Task-completion rates were particularly low for health-care sites (40 percent) and banking sites (44 percent). "Compared to 1999, we cannot quite declare victory, but we can declare progress," Nielsen said in an interview.

Washington Post

The evolving web

However much technology develops there is still plenty of room for improvement and Nielsen sees the personalisation of the web as a case in point. The ability of websites to serve up the content that they guess each of us will find the most interesting is still in its infancy, he argues.

"There's always been a lot of discussion about personalisation and the web but it has never really taken off, probably because it's not that useful.

"The only time online retailer Amazon has recommended a book that I really, really want is when it's a book I've already bought."

BBC

Two words is a minute description of a human need

People either love or hate you. Have your methods helped you?

JN: There probably are some people who are beyond reach because they don't want to listen. It's kind of like being an astronomer and you're looking up at the sky and saying that it looks like the earth is revolving around the sun, not the sun revolving around the earth. You can report it and the Pope can like it or not, but it doesn't change what's going on. It's the same here: I'm reporting what average people find when they visit a website. If you don't listen your users will suffer and your business will suffer.

You have to fight for the people. These new technologies aren't just for the technological elite. Remember that the average user is not there when a company or design team has a meeting about what to do on our website.

Guardian

Google and the Long Tail of Online Publishing

More content equals more traffic. Jakob Nielsen notes that with 10 years of archives, 80% of his 30 million pageviews has come from archived stories. Authors should recognize their archives as being significant assets and do whatever it takes to preserve them.

The Media Stock Blog

Jakob Nielsen's New Usability Book is Now Available

The Table of Contents is extensive. What caught my eye, however, is Chapter Five, which is called "Search". They present both the search engine results side, as well as the search engine optimization side. Included are sections called "Black-Hat SEO Tricks", "Keyword Overuse Backfires", "How Search Engines Determine a Site's Reputation" and "Architectural SEO". It's interesting how the relationship between SEO/M and usability continues to intertwine.

Kim Krause Berg

'More is less' for many home entertainment system users

On the collection of remotes in his home, Nielsen counted 239 buttons, a fairly typical number for an American household, he said. And in his home and most others, there are dozens of buttons that never get used.

Nielsen said electronics companies include new features to convince consumers that they're buying the latest and greatest technology. But that's sacrificing usability for marketing.

“Simplicity is a feature,” Nielsen said. “It's just not a check-box feature you can put on the side of the box.”
One problem is that the industry has been slow to adopt standards, Nielsen said. When each manufacturer charts its own course, devices must be controlled by their own remotes. That may be about to change.

San Diego Union Tribune

Coming to the aid of the search party

Research by US web design expert Jakob Nielsen shows the snobbery of search. Internet users concentrate almost exclusively on the first two natural search results. After the top five, the rest may as well not be there.

"It's striking how little users read on the search engine results pages: just a few words read and bang, they click," Mr Nielsen says.

Mr Parfitt noticed the same thing empirically with Fast Impressions. "If you're in the top two spots, you're OK - but if you're beyond the top three you're pretty much stuffed, people won't bother with you at all." So he started looking for advice on boosting and maintaining his Google rank - and soon realised he was not alone. As companies increasingly crave search-engine visibility, a whole industry is growing up around serving their needs.

Sydney Morning Herald

PR Podcast

And even though blogs have given rise to a veritable revolution in personal publishing, Nielsen also explains why the press release is here to stay. "One thing we've found in our user studies, and we've done studies not just with journalists, as I mentioned, but also with financial analysts, and certainly many many studies just with customers, and we know that they actually want to know the company's perspective. Where does the company think its going?" says Nielsen. "The company's own angle is something that people are looking for, whether it's journalists, whether it's investors, or whether it's customers they all want this information, and the pressroom is where to go and get it."

The podcast, which is available for immediate download, runs about 25 minutes, and also includes a discussion of how search engine optimization colors perception, accommodating a global audience through Internet pressrooms, how best to integrate your pressroom into your website, and more.

download MP3 (22.5 Mb)

Press Release

Buy Me : PR sections of corporate sites: optimizing usability for journalists, 75 design guidelines

Eye tracking Web usability

He gave an example of ecommerce sites with images of current promotions in the middle of a page that get tuned out. "If it's a product associated with what they are interested in, it gets high attention," he noted. Similarly, animation can repel the eye if it's not relevant to the user or if its overly complicated. "These are not spinning things that move around from all different angles, just a simple, predefined, one spin that plays on its own," Nielsen said.

Basically, users have become savvy surfers of Web pages, and that includes advertising content. "Advertising in general fares very poorly," Nielsen said. "There is almost no fixation on ads, and when there is, usually just in corner of the ad, perhaps attracted by some movement for a moment."

ZDNet

Survey offers a 'sneak peek' into Net surfers' brains

The Nielsen firm asked more than 230 participants to research specific tasks and companies online. Tasks included learning to tie a type of knot called a "bowline," figuring out how to invest $10,000, planning a Colorado ski trip, shopping for a mortgage and deciding whether to adopt a cairn terrier or pharaoh hound from an animal shelter.

Other findings from the firm's study:

• Individuals read Web pages in an "F" pattern. They're more inclined to read longer sentences at the top of a page and less and less as they scroll down. That makes the first two words of a sentence very important.

"People are extremely good at screening out things and focusing in on a small number of salient page elements," says Jakob Nielsen, a principal at the firm.

• Surfers connect well with images of people looking directly at them. It helps if the person in the photo is attractive, but not too good looking.

Photos of people who are clearly professional models are a turnoff. "The person has to be approachable," Pernice Coyne says.

USA Today

Amazon's A9 Mystery

If Google has the largest chunk of search-ad dollars, that’s because it fields the largest number of search queries—nearly 40 percent—of all search engines. A9 doesn’t even figure on the chart, because most people don’t even know it exists.

“It’s a great product, but there’s not a broad amount of pickup and distribution,” says Mr. McClure.

Even startups like Blinkx and MeeVee have more advertising visibility than A9. “They are not going as far as fast as they should,” says Jakob Nielsen, a web usability expert and author of several books on the subject. “Customers have a tendency to stay with what they discover first.”

Red Herring

Novell tweaks Linux for better graphics, video performance

Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert with Nielsen Norman Group in Fremont, Calif., applauded the transparency and extra desktop features. But he was less impressed with the ability for application windows to be dragged halfway between desktops and viewed in 3-D. He called it “a great way to show off graphical horsepower but basically useless.”

Nielsen said Linux’s reputation for having a user interface that's less attractive and harder to use than those in Apple’s Mac OS X or Microsoft’s Windows is well-earned, and a natural result of its technical heritage.

“Linux has always been able to attract great programming talent, but not as many talented usability people,” Nielsen said. He noted that it’s often difficult in the free-wheeling open-source culture to veto new features that add marginal utility at the cost of increased complexity. “To have a simple unified experience that is good for the average user requires someone to say no,” he said.

ComputerWorld

Google Casts Shadow Over Demo Show

For search startup Gravee, the issue is Google's inequitable business model. Citing the criticism of Web design guru Jakob Nielsen, company co-founder Erik Rannala suggested that search engines leech value from Web site creators without returning enough. The company's answer is AdShare, a search system that shares ad revenue with those listed in search results when an ad is clicked. It also lets consumers tag online search results and maintain a list of their tags online that can generate revenue for them in the same way. It's an interesting idea with a long way to go to ubiquity.

Internet Week

E-Commerce Site Design: The Product Page

Many product pages offer shoppers an array of product options; for example, 'what color do you want that shirt in?' Or, 'how finely do you want that coffee ground?' A product page should ask shoppers to select these options before they put that item in the shopping cart, Nielsen recommends.

The reason: Once that item is in the cart, shoppers may proceed to check out without realizing they haven't selected all their options. Also, customers often use the 'Back' button to exit the cart (instead of 'Continue Shopping'), so any selections they've made to the item in the cart could be undone.

He also cautions against presenting shoppers with multilevel menus on a product page to select product options. If the user's mouse strays off the menu at this critical juncture, they could become frustrated.

E-Commerce Guide