Before we actually dig into details, let establish a common understating of what usability is. Usability is mostly defined as ‘ease of use’, but this is over-simplification of the art and science of Usability. In a broader sense, usability is “effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which a specified set of users can achieve a specified set of tasks in a particular environment.” – ISO 9241 Standard

Usability is ultimately concerned with the following factors:

• Effectiveness: Effectiveness is the completeness and accuracy with which users achieve specified goals. It is determined by looking at whether the user’s goals are met successfully and whether all work is correct.
• Efficiency: Efficiency can be described as the speed (with accuracy) in which users can complete the tasks for which they use the product. Efficiency metrics include the number of clicks or keystrokes required or the total ‘time on task’.
• Engaging: An interface is engaging if it is pleasant and satisfying to use. The visual design, graphic images, colors, use of any multimedia elements, language, font size and style, links, buttons all affect the relationship between the user and the application.
• Error Tolerant: An ideal system has no errors; and there is no ideal system. Errors are expected. An error tolerant program is designed in a way that it prevents errors in the first place and helps the user in recovering from any errors that do occur.
• Easy to Learn: Last but not the least; a ‘useable’ system is easy to learn. It allows its users to get familiar with different functions and perform them without much effort or the need of training.

Usability Guidelines

1. Design Process

• Set Primary Goals: Clearly define the primary goals of the website before starting the design process. Goals of a website may be education, information, entertainment, trade etc. Goals also determine the audience, content, look and feel and functionality.
• Set Performance Goals: Set performance goals that include the overall performance of the website in different scenarios. For example, the website will be displayed correctly in Internet Explorer 8.0 and above with screen resolution 1024×768.
• Set Preference Goals: Preference goals address end user’s satisfaction. Set preference goals such as allowing the user to view the website with small, medium and large font size.
• Create & Evaluate Prototypes: Create and evaluate prototypes in iterations. The iterative process ensures that all goals are met.

2. Design Considerations

• Establish Level of Importance: Establish a high-to-low level of importance for each category and carry this approach throughout the design. Important categories should appear higher on the page so users can locate them quickly. This is applicable to links, buttons, form fields etc.
• Reduce User’s Input: Automate as much of the site’s function as possible. Eliminate the need for users to perform tasks like performing mental calculations, making estimations, recalling account numbers and passwords, etc. This helps the user concentrate on main tasks.
• Be Consistent: Maintain consistency in page titles, font size, style, color, header, graphics, buttons, positioning, forms etc. A consistent website allows the users to get familiar with the environment and learn to retrieve information and perform tasks in less time.
• Provide Feedback: Provide appropriate feedback to inform users while they interact with the website. For example, intimate the users after they have successfully submitted any information.
• Include Logos: Differentiate your website from others by placing a logo in a consistent place on every page. This is useful when the user is browsing several websites at the same time.
• Limit Maximum Page Size: Keep Web page size at or below 30,000 bytes, which is maximum allowable time. Users do not wait long for a page to open in their browser and move on to other website.
• Limit Use of Frames: Do not use frames in websites, unless there is a strong reason to do so. Frames can be confusing and may behave unexpectedly in different context.

3. Content Organization

• Provide Useful Content: Provide useful and usable content that supports the Web site goal on each page. The content should be arranged logically and must be free from errors and ambiguity. Avoid irrelevant details.
• Use Short Sentence/Paragraph Length: Write sentences with 20 or fewer words and paragraphs with fewer than five sentences. Use lists to break up long sentences or display important points. This improves readability.
• Provide Printing Option: Many users want to keep printed copies of website for reference or taking notes. Provide printable version of all pages, files and documents on the website.

4. Title & Headlines

• Provide Page Titles: Put a descriptive and different title on each page. Title should be meaning and descriptive of the type of information the page. Meaningful title helps the user in creating and sorting bookmarks. Similarly, appropriate titles improve Page Rank on search engines.
• Use Proper Headlines: Use meaningful and descriptive headlines. A good headline is brief and clearly suggests the following text. It helps the reader quickly scan the page and understand the main theme. Headings can be used to classify information under different categories or break up long texts into small bits.

5. Page Length

• Determine Page Length: Decide length of page according to the information it contains. It is better to have short pages for home pages, navigation pages and pages that need to be quickly browsed. Use long pages for printable/downloadable versions or when you want to maintain, fewer web page files.
• Determine Scrolling vs. Paging Needs: If reading speed is important and response time is reasonably fast, use paging (linking) rather than scrolling. In this way, users will be able to move from page to page by following quick links without always scrolling to important information.

4. Page Layout

• Align Page Elements: Align text, elements, graphics etc consistently to improve readability and ‘look and feel’ of web pages.
• Reduce Unused Space: Reduce the amount of unused space on pages used for scanning and searching. On pages that are primarily links or categories, like a home page, the greater the density, the faster the scanning. “Density” is defined as the percent of the screen filled with categories and text. Density has no impact on user accuracy or preference. On content/text pages, using some white space to separate paragraphs and ideas is important.
• Format for Efficient Viewing: Determine actual utility of a web page before designing. Pages based on content do not need graphics. Similarly, pages based on graphics should not be filled with text.

5. Font Formatting

• Use Readable Font Size: Use at least 10-point familiar font style. Do not use fancy fonts unless there is a strong reason to do so. Use serif or sans serif font to achieve the best possible reading speed. Do not mix serif and sans serif fonts within the text, because it may decrease reading speed. Recommended fonts are: Times Roman, Georgia serif fonts, Helvetica, or Verdana sans serif.

6. Reading and Scanning

• Enhance Scanning: Users tend to scan, stopping only when they find something interesting. Enhance scanning by providing clear links, headings, short phrases and sentences, and short paragraphs.

7. Links

• Show Links Clearly: Hyperlinks should be clearly distinguishable from normal text. Preferably, use blue underlined text for all unused links. Do not require users to move the mouse over text to discover hyperlink. Avoid graphic link. If a graphic link is used, make sure that it is easily recognized. Usually, “click here” is used for graphic links. However, some automatic screen readers may have problems deciphering what “click here” refers to.
• Indicate Internal/External Links: Clearly indicate when a link will move users to (a) the same page, (b) a different page in the same Web site or, (c) a page on a different Web site.
• Use Descriptive Link Label: Link should be self-explanatory. User should be able to instantly guess what information in liked to the hyperlink. For example, use About Greepit instead of Company Information.
• Repeat Text Links: Ensure that the most important information can be accessed from more than one related text link. Some users find important links easily when they have a certain label, while others may recognize the link best with an alternative name.
• Present Tab Effectively: Place tabs (used for links) at the top of the page and ensure that they look like click-able.
• Show Used Links: Visited links should be clearly distinguished otherwise users repeatedly bounce among a set of pages not knowing that they are going back to the same page again and again. Make links that have not been clicked blue, and clicked links purple or red.

8. Graphics

• Use Graphics Sparingly: Excessive use of graphic increases download time of the web page. A graphic can be used only if it enhances content or leads to a better understanding of the information being presented. When using graphics, try to use small and few graphics in order to reduce download time.
• Avoid Graphics on Search Pages: Avoid use of graphics on pages that are primarily used for searching. In general, graphics do not have either a positive or a negative impact on the success of users when searching, but they take time to design, implement, and maintain and may slow downloading.

9. Search

• Provide Search Engine: Carefully consider whether there is any advantage to including a search engine. Search engines are helpful on some sites, but do not add value on others. Web sites that can benefit most from search engines are those that are large and complex.

10. Navigation

• Keep Navigation Consistent: Use consistent navigation aids such as menus, tab links etc on all pages. Common navigation type ensures that users can locate and remember frequently used links and explore the website easily. Prefer text-based navigation aids to graphic based aids.Group navigation elements in close proximity and place them with the right margin for the web page. Users may need to scroll to navigation elements, if they are placed with left margin.

11. Hardware and Software

• Consider Connection Speed: Design for connection speeds of 56 kilobytes per second (kbps). Remember that actual connection speed is about 38% lower than modem speed capability. This means that users with a 56 kbps connection actually have a connection averaging about 35 kbps.
• Reduce Download Time: Create web pages that load quickly. Slow download times may result from too many graphics, unnecessary use of applets and slow server performance. Average wait-time is 8.6 seconds.
• Consider Monitor Size & Resolution: For best results, design for computers with 17-inch monitors and screen resolutions of 1024×768 pixels.

There exists many strategies to improve website Search Engine Ranking (Create and join groups, join social sites like Facebook and Twitter, join forums, etc… ) but some are more appropriate to the design niche than others and Link Building is one of them.

What is Link Building?

Link Building is the process of creating inbound links to get more traffic; to improve your site’s ranking in Search Engines and to be popular. It is one of the best ways to make your site well-known. Link Building can be achieved by reciprocal links, being listed in design galleries, sponsoring a contest, etc.

Followings are very good strategies for getting inbound links.

Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal link or Link Exchanges can be defined as a mutual agreement where two webmasters agree to show the links of their websites interchangeably. More sites (quality & relevant sites) you get linked form, made you more popular in search engines.

Web Design Galleries

Try creating a nice design. If you have a good blog design then you can submit your site in different web design galleries. It’s an effective way to show off your skills and more important to get quality traffic. Few of them are as follows:

• http://www.cssmania.com/
• http://www.nicestylesheet.com/
• http://www.thebestdesigns.com/

Internal Links

Important point but many bloggers don’t bother and usually neglect it. Google rewards coherent internal linking so never miss your previous related articles or posts.

There are few good plugins developed for WordPress that can be used to help internal link building process. Few popular ones are:

• http://mitcho.com/code/yarpp/
• http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/…

Another plugin named SEO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.

Sponsor a contest

Try sponsoring a contest by giving away software, service or a cash prize. You can give away your product’s licenses, Membership for a certain time, Hosting accounts, etc.

If you are interested in sponsoring a contest at Greepit.com, let’s discuss by contacting me.

Create a Free Theme or Web Template

This is a very good approach and this Link Building strategy can lead to a lot of backlinks if you create an attractive free theme or a free web template which has a lot to offer to the audience.

A creative, eye catching and free theme or free web template can put you on top from nowhere. While creating a theme, try placing your link in the footer. I learned from past experiences that people who download your theme will not get rid of these links.

If you are a good designer then you have a chance to show off your creative skills and to help yourself getting few design projects.

Guest Posts

Another out of the box technique to get backlinks is writing quality guest posts on different blogs can make you popular. If you want this technique to be efficient then choose blogs which are identical thematically to your website.

If you are willing to write a guest post on Greepit.com, I would love to hear from you. Contact me with your post topic.

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About Author

The IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit helps Web developers, hosting providers, and Web server administrators to improve their Web site’s relevance in search results by recommending how to make the site content more search engine-friendly.

Some SEO Toolkit Features

• Feature rich Query Builder interface
• Display of detailed information for each URL
• Display of robots content in a friendly user interface
• Support for filtering, grouping, and sorting
• Ability to add sitemap locations

With this Free SEO Toolkit you can control how search engines access and display Web content and inform search engines about locations that are available for indexing. It requires an IIS enabled computer.

Website: http://www.iis.net/expand/SEOToolkit

Going-Up’s modern, Web 2.0 Dashboard allows you to manage multiple sites and see at-a-glance stats of your entire network of sites.

Some Features

• Complete WebSite Stats
• Google Page Rank Tracking
• Track Keyword Positions
• Actions & Goals
• Alexa Rank Tracking
• Keyword Research
• Traffic Trend Analysis
• Customized Dashboard
• Keyword Density Tool

Track Keyword Positions, see your SEO efforts by graphing keyword positions over time. You can set Actions & Goals, set custom tracking events to see sales, downloads and subscribes. Easily Customize Dashboard, show only the data you want to see with the user friendly AJAX interface.

Website: https://www.goingup.com

Web CEO, one of the most popular softwares in this area, lets you manage the SEO-side of unlimited number of websites with a very informative interface.

Web CEO comes with a lots of featured free edition & much more featured paid editions.

I’ve been using Web CEO for a long time and one of the best features of it is the advices after analyzing pages. Rather than just telling the problems, Web CEO informs you about how to solve them in a detailed way.

Some Web CEO features:

• Submit websites to search engines
• Analyze a website’s position in search engines for any keyword
• Keyword Mining from competitor’s pages
• Advice for General Search Engine Compliance
• Analyzing Link Popularity (Number of Links to Your Website)
• Analyzing Backward Links vs. Competition
• Reporting

Website: http://www.webceo.com

1. Join forums, forums are a great way to achieve links to your website. In most forums you are allowed to have a signature and in your signature you can put a link to your website. But another important note to look on is making sure the forum is somewhat related to your website. You will still get credit if it’s not, but if it’s related to your website than you will be accomplishing two tasks at once.

You will be advertising for your website (bringing in targeted traffic) You will also be building your websites presence.

Your websites presence is very important to your survival. The more people see, or hear about your website the more credibility you will have and this increases your chances of having these visitors come back and possibly become leads.

2. Submit to search engine directories. Search engine directories are a good way to get a free link to your website. They also increase your chances at being listed higher on popular search engines like Google, and overture.

Most search engine directories allow you to submit to their website for free. This will allow you to increase your web presence by being listed on another search engine, and it will also be a free link.

Remember the more links you have the higher your PR will be

3. Using ezine ads (or newsletters). Creating an ezine will probably be the most beneficial step you can take to increasing your web presence. When you create an ezine you will be able to keep visitors coming back to your website for more by using signatures and giving special deals.

Ezine’s will also allow you to increase your back links. By creating an ezine you can submit your information about your ezine to an ezine directory. This directory will than link to your website(thus giving you a free link).

4. Creating and publishing articles. Articles are an easy source of generating new traffic. You can include your signature in your article. This will bring in more traffic from article submission directories.

Your signature usually consists of 4 to 8 lines. Usually the first line would be the title of the website that you are trying to advertise. The last line would be the link to the website and the lines in between these would be a sales pitch to draw your viewers into your website.

5. Links from related websites. Gaining links from related websites can be one of the most frustrating tasks you can attempt.

They are very easy to find, but can be somewhat difficult to obtain links from.

To find related websites, all you have to do is go to a search engine… say Google… and type in your subject. Maybe your website is based on ford mustangs.

You go to Google and type in ford mustangs, than you look around for pages that are somewhat related to your website. After you have done this (which should be very easy) you have to contact them in some way to get your link posted on their website. This can be the most difficult task because a lot of webmasters ignore e-mail’s from people requesting links because they don’t see the importance of it at the time. Some other reasons could be that they are rarely online, or they delete spam mail and sometimes delete their important emails in the process.

Important note: When looking for link partners don’t just link with websites that have a page rank of 4 or higher. Link with anyone and everyone you get a chance to. If you link to someone that has a page rank of zero, this will not hurt your page rank. It will only increase it because you are getting a link back to your website. Google doesn’t look at your back links page ranks to determine what yours is going to be. It simply looks at how many back links you have.

So if Google one day decided to link to a website that was just created and this website has a page rank of 0 and has a domain that goes something like this: mywebsite.geocities.com it’s page rank wouldn’t increase even though Google’s page rank is 10, it’s rank would still be zero because it would only have that one back link.

Sarfraz Shoukat – Website Designer Driven by Creativity
Building websites to increase sales, and build web presence
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Google said that you should not bother to submit your website to them. They will find your website, and once they do, they’ll index your web pages. The reason behind this is quite simple. Google uses links to hop from one website to another. If they arrive at a page that is unfamiliar to their database, they will index it… and thus is the method by which your very own website can be a part of their database.

The problem is, there are literally billions of web pages out there. Even with the mechanical precision by which it operates, it will take weeks, if not months, before Google can stumble upon your website for proper indexing. The trick is in expediting this process. And how are you supposed to do that?

Let’s put it this way. If only one website is linking to yours, Google has to crawl through that site before it could discover yours. 1 in 1,000,000,000 is not a favorable ratio. But what if you have 1,000 websites linking to yours? Alas! Your website would have better chances of getting indexed fast!

The number of websites linking to yours is called your link popularity. To check your current link popularity, use the tool that can be found at www.linkpopularity.com .

Regardless of what number would appear (which, chances are, would be zero if you have just published your website), we will have to build your link popularity to at least a thousand so that Google can find your website within a week’s time.

How are we to do this?

Here are some specific steps you should follow.

1. Write 10 highly informative and unique articles about the topic of your website.
2. If you can’t write articles, as such would require a lot of time, hire a freelancer to do it for you. Go to www.rentacoder.com , www.elance.com or www.guru.com and advertise a job. You’ll receive some bids, and it’s up to you to select the best freelancer for the task you want done.
3. Submit these articles to as many article directories you could find. The ones you shouldn’t miss are www.exinearticles.com , www.goarticles.com and www.isnare.com . Being linked via the latter option has been known to work well with MSN rankings. There are more than a thousand prominent article directories today. If you have one article in each of their databanks, then you’d have a thousand pages linking to your website.
4. Create a blog at www.blogger.com . Choose the default hosting option, that is, allow Blogger to host your blog. Blogger is owned by Google. You see the point we’re driving at here? Make sure that your blog would link to your main website, either as a mention in your posts, or as a fixed link on your menu bar.
5. Link to as many blogs as possible. Chances are, the owners of those blogs would link to your blog as well, and the readers of those blogs may even do the same thing.
6. There are sure to be some forums devoted to the subject of your website. Find these forums and create an account with each of them. Use the tool at www.link-advantage.com/search to find the online community related to the subject of your site. Once you’re a member in those forums, include a link to your website in the signature box that would be provided for. Your signature box will appear in every post you will make. The trick here is to publish as many significant posts as you could. Each post will serve as a link to your main website, and would improve its link popularity.

These steps can be done in 3 days, and before the week is over, you’d be surprised that your website would have been indexed by Google, as well as the two other main search engines at that.

Do they visit the content you want them to visit? Are they looking in the right places of your web page? Are you able to keep your user’s attention, or do they just leave quickly?

It’s not just about the content either. If your design loads slowly – or if moving from one section to another takes a long time – it affects the user’s experience.

These things can be the make-or-break factors between a user clicking on a link to find more information, or the back button to find it elsewhere.

Some things to consider:

• Are important information being seen by the user?
• Are the navigation and action items intuitive?
• Is the user being directed to sections in a logical manner?
• Does the web page load quickly enough to not turn away the user?

If you’re interested in analyzing and optimizing your page layout – here’s some extremely useful tools that you can use to help.

1. ClickHeat

ClickHeat is an open source visual tool for showing “hot” and “cold” zones of a web page. It allows you to see which spots users click on most, and which spots are being ignored.

It’s very easy to implement on your website, you only have to include an external JavaScript file.

Download: Clickheat on SourceForge.net.

2. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg offers a myriad of analytical tools to help you visualize what visitors are doing.

Features include: Confetti - allowing you to see what people are clicking on based on certain factors such as their operating system and where they came from, Overlay – providing you with tons of data about particular links, and Report sharing – enabling you to share the data with team members and clients.

The free version only allows 4 pages to be tracked – so use your top landing pages to get the most data.

3. YSlow for Firebug

A key tenet of a strong design is that, not only should information be presented in a logical and elegant fashion, but that it must also be served quickly, with very little delay.

YSlow for Firebug is a free tool for Mozilla Firefox that gives you information about your front-end design to see if it performs well. It gives you a letter grade (A through F) and outlines your web page’s trouble spots.

It’s based on the Yahoo! Developer Network’s “Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site” initially written by Steve Souders, who was once the Chief of Performance at Yahoo! and is now working over at Google on web performance and open source initiatives.

Downloads: Firebug extension for Firefox (required) and YSlow.

4. clickdensity

clickdensity is a full suite of usability analysis tools that will help you assess your web page design.

You can use heat maps showing where users click on the most, hover maps – which shows people scrolling over links but not clicking on them, and A/B Tests which allows you to change certain page elements to see which style is more effective.

The free subscription give you 5,000 clicks and only one page and one site to monitor.

5. ClickTale

ClickTale offers a lot of user data pertaining to how visitors use your website.

There are plenty of things you can look at such as average time it takes for a user to click on a link, a user’s hesitation on clicking a link, hover to click ratio, and much more. It also provides detailed reports and charts on your users’ monitor sizes to better optimize your web page design to cater for the typical visitor.

6. Clicky

Perhaps the most interesting feature that Clicky has is its real-time tracking and monitoring feature, called Spy (check out the demo here).

Besides Spy, there’s a host of other analytics data you can look at such as user Actions – which records click data from your users and Visitors – providing you user data.

7. Google Analytics

One of the best free services that Google offers is Google Analytics and probably the most well-known analytics tool. It’s incredibly easy to install and offers plenty of user and content data to help you learn more about your web pages’ performance.

It has a feature called Site Overlay, which gives you a visual representation of the popular places your users like to click on. It also offers data on bounce rates and your top exit pages (to see what pages make users leave).

So there they are, some of the best tools in the market to help you troubleshoot and optimize your page layout. In the end, it’s a combination of great content, as well as how you present this content — that will lead to an effective design.