Re: Website readability

[Richard Danca <rdanca -at- UIE -dot- COM>]

Sorry to get into this thread at such a late date. However, I believe
I'm adding some new, factual information to the discussion,
particularly the issue of links changing colors.

In our web site usability studies we've found that the only
significant use of color seems to be the color change on links that
a user has clicked on.

In fact, one disadvantage we found with graphical links is that,
unlike text-only links, they do not change color when a user has
clicked on them -- so users don't know they've already visited that
particular page.

Interestingly, when users have both a text and graphical link to the
same location, they almost always choose the text link. This may be
because underlined text is obviously a link and you usually can't
tell just by looking that a picture is a link. (Unless you do what
most users seem to: wave the mouse pointer around until the browser
gives you the finger with the hand cursor.)

We did not get into the serif/sans serif wars. We did, however, find
that too much white space on a web page makes the site *more*
difficult to use. In addition, longer text links (up to 10 words or
so) seem to work better than short ones.

There's lots more info about our studies in our report, "Web Site
Usability: A Designer's Guide," and on our web site,
http://www.uie.com

While I'm plugging User Interface Engineering, let me also mention
our upcoming User Interface 98 conference in Cambridge, Mass., from
Oct. 5-7. Details on the web site or by calling us at 978-975-4343.

Thanks.
==================
Richard A. Danca                        User Interface Engineering
mailto:richard -dot- danca -at- uie -dot- com            800 Turnpike St., Suite 101
978-975-4343 978-975-5353 (fax)         North Andover, MA 01845
http://www.uie.com                            USA
Send me your postal address and I'll
send you a free copy of our newsletter, Eye For Design
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