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Articles published in August 2009


User-friendly error messages: 7 tips (28-Aug-2009)

A lot of websites make usability mistakes on their form pages. And that costs visitors. On a form page that’s extra painful because if you lose a visitor there, you loose a very valuable visitor. A visitor who’s willing to make the effort to get in touch with you or perhaps even to order something. 7 tips for user-friendly error messages.

Does your website need a manual? (21-Aug-2009)

No matter how long you thought about the concept of your website, no matter how great the idea looks on paper, no matter how unique or – God forbid – innovative you might think it is, if the average user doesn’t know what to do when he sees your website… start over.

Gender error (14-Aug-2009)

According to Citroën I’m suffering a ‘gender error’. Should I panic? Wear more make-up maybe? Stuff some of those chicken cutlets down my bra? None of the above. It seems I simply forgot to tell them whether I am a MR, MISS or MRS. Phew.

Contact info: how, what and where? (13-Aug-2009)

Making sure visitors can easily get in touch with you is one of the easiest ways to generate leads. Good contact information makes you look accessible and that in turn makes people trust you. 5 places to put your contact information and tips for a good ‘Contact’ page.

Ad conversion: look at the whole picture (06-Aug-2009)

One of the great things about the web is that you can measure just about anything. Tools like Google AdWords and Google Analytics have made the process of advertising, measuring and optimising a whole lot easier. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t use these tools effectively. They focus on the wrong numbers and forget to look at the whole picture.

Clickthrough rates are important. But they are the beginning of ad conversion analysis, not the end.

Navigation: how not to do it (04-Aug-2009)

There is one beauty of a no-no navigation on the website of webdesign agency bx]l[ab. Completely in Flash, nice and dynamic, very interactive and as a consequence completely unusable. You have to see it to believe it.

Passwords: to hide or not to hide? (02-Aug-2009)

Hiding passwords behind a row of bullets causes more problems than it’s worth, according to Jakob Nielsen. His advice: show the password on the screen by default and give users a check-box to indicate they want to hide it. Is that really the best solution?