If a website or company is big and famous, should you copy their design for your own site? Likely not, because good UX depends on context, and your situation could be quite different than a world-famous company's circumstances.
Users want to do the least amount of work possible to get to a desired web page. However, "work" is the sum of difficulty presented by each click and not the number of clicks in itself. Here are some tips for making a path easier to navigate.
The contrast between low-context and high-context cultures has substantial implications for web designs that target users in different countries. Examples from eyetracking research in China (a high-context culture) illustrate this point.
Do you need to mark fields as "required" in forms on your website or in apps? What if all fields are required? And what is the best way to show that a form field is required?
In testing, we often see users who don't scroll a web page even though there is much useful info below the fold. Often, the reason is "the illusion of completeness" which causes users to believe that they are seeing all there is.
4 guidelines for writing the link texts on websites to ensure users click the right options. Links should be Specific, Sincere, Substantial, and Succinct.
User interfaces must be fast, or users will give up. (In the case of websites, they'll leave if pages download too slowly.) The exact maximum response times vary by usage circumstances, and should be either 0.1, 1.0, or 10 seconds.
Data-entry form fields on websites are crucial for ecommerce and many other applications. Fields need labels and (sometimes) instructions, but placing this text inside the field lowers usability and accessibility and should be avoided.
Sliding hero images that rotate through a set of promotions, news, or the like on the top of web pages are often annoying to users and are definitely error prone, unless they are designed according to usability guidelines.
No. 1 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to provide visibility of system status through proper feedback, so that the user knows how commands are being interpreted and what the computer is up to at any time.
Grids are a great framework to help designers quickly put together a clean, well-aligned interface, and help users to easily scan, read, and use those interfaces.
Useful search suggestions lead to relevant results and are visually distinct from the query text. (This is about how to design the search feature on your own website, whether it's an ecommerce site or not.)
In the real world, you can get away with causing customers a small amount of difficulty, but on a website, visitors will leave at the smallest obstacle.
The page fold still matters and still applies. Even though the exact location of the fold differs between devices, it exists for every single user on every single screen.
Look beyond surface-level qualities to assess UX value. A design that looks (or sounds) good does not mean that it is. Good websites contain engaging features that help people accomplish their goals.
