Nielsen Norman GroupEvidence-Based User Experience Research, Training, and Consulting
The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.
Structure and navigation must support each other and integrate with search and across subsites. Complexity, inconsistency, hidden options, and clumsy UI mechanics prevent users from finding what they need.
Bad content, bad links, bad navigation, bad category pages... which is worst for business? In these examples, bad content takes the prize for costing the company the most money.
Application usability is enhanced when users know how to operate the UI and it guides them through the workflow. Violating common guidelines prevents both.
Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.
The oldies continue to be goodies - or rather, baddies - in the list of design stupidities that irk users the most.
Sites are getting better at using minimalist design, maintaining archives, and offering comprehensive services. However, these advances entail their own usability problems, as several prominent mistakes from 2003 show.
Ten usability mistakes are made by about two-thirds of corporate websites. The prevalence of these errors alone warrants attention, especially since they appear on sites with significant investment in usable design.
Every year brings new mistakes. In 2002, several of the worst mistakes in Web design related to poor email integration. The number one mistake, however, was lack of pricing information, followed by overly literal search engines.
Anything done by more than 90% of big sites becomes a de-facto design standard that must be followed unless an alternative design achieves 100% increased usability.
New technology and conventions have led to several new classes of usability problems in Web design.
Major websites violate 16% of the top ten mistakes in Web design on the average; huge corporate sites have many more design mistakes than the most popular sites.
Nine of ten mistakes in Web design identified in May 1996 still cause severe usability problems and should be avoided in modern websites.
Most corporate sites are so bad that Web usability problems cost a large company millions of dollars per year. On average, users fail when they try to accomplish tasks on the Web.
This article has attracted millions of page views since it was written in 1996, but most sites *still* commit these basic usability bloopers.