30 usability tips

2C provides clear and concrete recommendations for usability improvements. In order to get you on track we present 30 usability tips. These tips concern the most frequent usability problems found in our usability tests.

Site goal

Communicate the site's purpose. Ensure related options available on the website are easy to access, and sufficiently visible.
Ensure users are guided in an unambiguous way while performing tasks on the site.
Provide a function to sort or filter (product) lists.
Do not hide information or options by requiring a password. Users are not always willing to create a personal page with a password.

Page lay-out

Ensure that each page has a descriptive page title.
Do not place too many different items or options on a page and ensure that pages show a moderate amount of white space.
Ensure that foreground and background colour combinations provide sufficient contrast, and use relative sizes for text.
Do not use different colours in text, except concerning hyperlinks.
Avoid pop-ups. You may use those displaying help text.

Homepage

Clearly communicate the site's purpose and contents; making sure users are triggered to look further.
Restrict the number of navigation possibilities to main options available on the website.
Ensure the homepage, and the other pages have fast loading times. Make pages smaller than 60Kb.

Hyperlinks

Use link labels that teach users something about the link's destination (do not use "click here").
Let hyperlinks stand out by using different colours and underlining. It is not necessary to use underlining in navigation menus.
Use different colours for visited and unvisited hyperlinks.

Navigation menus

Use simple terms to indicate pages or categories, therefore no abbreviations, company terms or other in-house jargon.
Make it visually clear where users are in the navigation menus.
Do not place too many items in a menu structure (Maximum is 7 to 9).
Provide a link to the homepage in the main navigation, and call it home.
Do not use more than two places on the page for navigation menus.

Search

Place a search engine on larger websites (more than 20 pages).
Ensure you can access the search engine from each page directly. Place the search field in a way it is directly visible on each page, preferably in the top right hand corner.
Ensure the search engine searches within the website and not within the internet.
Provide search results that show context of the search word, a clear and clickable page title. Provide the number of search results and easy ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ links at the top and bottom of the search results.

Text

Make sentences short and concise. Use subparagraphs and provide these with sub-headings.
Avoid the use of help text for solving usability problems. Users hardly read any help text.
Use headings and bullet lists, making information to the point and easy to read.

Forms

Do not limit users at filling in information in a form (It should be possible to represent a telephone number like ‘555-536-270’ like ‘555536270’ and like 555 536 270). Let the computer format the information.
Confirm sending information or confirm completing a process, and give an indication of what the user can expect, for example the time it takes to complete a process.
Do not place a ‘RESET’ or ‘Cancel’-button in forms. They are often used by mistake.