Increasingly, I'm seeing more sites designed with bigger font. Nowadays, 10pt font is considered "small", and we're seeing more and more 12pt fonts as standard. Even if paragraph text is still relatively small, headlines and titles are getting bigger.
I love it.
Bigger screen sizes now mean that we have the space. What used to be readable on the old 800 x 600 screens of yesteryear now requires a magnifying glass if you put it on a 1280 x 1024. Only a tiny percentage of users now have the small screens.
Silver surfers are driving the demand for simplicity. When you get older, your eyesight deteriorates. Larger font sizes it make it easier to read what's going on. Usability is now a common place discipline in e-businesses (although not common enough in my opinion), and time after time, usability studies show that small fonts can create unnecessary hurdles.
It's not just older folks that benefit. The rest of us can see what's going on from a distance, in poor light, on the move.
How many sites have you got frustrated with because the font was too big? I can't think of any. What about sites where the font was too small? Now, I could think of a few there.
To illustrate why big works, here's some examples of sites that use larger fonts...
The new rightmove.co.uk property search site
BBC news
Amazon
37 signals
Jakob Neilsen's alertbox
Note that you don't need to use large fonts throughout. There is still a place for smaller fonts, although they shouldn't be standard.
Set your browser to "larger" font and start looking at sites with smaller fonts. You soon realise how much easier many of them would be to use if they increased their font size.
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
Sunday, 18 November 2007
Free web-based mind mapping software
I do a lot of my thinking and work using Mindmaps.
Drop an idea on the screen, move it around, connect it to other ideas, and eventually build a map of how all the ideas fit together. For someone like me with a conceptual organisational mind, it's much more useful that just using Word, Visio or Excel.
I tend to use MindManager, a licenced application that is installed locally. A full licence is a hefty £199, although there is a Lite Version for home use at £49. If you want to send your maps to others you can export to PDF, and there is also a free MindManager viewer which others can install if they don't have the full software.
Recently however there are a couple of web-based alternatives to choose from.
Mindmeister and Mind42 are 2 web-based mind mapping tools which you can use for free. The big advantage of these is that you can collaborate with others and build maps together and store the map on the web.
Personally I found the user interface of MindMeister to be better. Neither are as smooth to use as MindManger, but of course - they are free!
Another free option is FreeMind, a free application (installed locally) written in Java. I haven't tried this as I already have MindManager, but it looks worth a look.
Get mapping! It's a great way to structure your thoughts and organise ideas.
Drop an idea on the screen, move it around, connect it to other ideas, and eventually build a map of how all the ideas fit together. For someone like me with a conceptual organisational mind, it's much more useful that just using Word, Visio or Excel.
I tend to use MindManager, a licenced application that is installed locally. A full licence is a hefty £199, although there is a Lite Version for home use at £49. If you want to send your maps to others you can export to PDF, and there is also a free MindManager viewer which others can install if they don't have the full software.
Recently however there are a couple of web-based alternatives to choose from.
Mindmeister and Mind42 are 2 web-based mind mapping tools which you can use for free. The big advantage of these is that you can collaborate with others and build maps together and store the map on the web.
Personally I found the user interface of MindMeister to be better. Neither are as smooth to use as MindManger, but of course - they are free!
Another free option is FreeMind, a free application (installed locally) written in Java. I haven't tried this as I already have MindManager, but it looks worth a look.
Get mapping! It's a great way to structure your thoughts and organise ideas.
Saturday, 17 November 2007
Checklist For Reviewing Webpages
I'm often asked "what do you think of this web page"?
I immediately have a surge of mental activity that leads to a whole load of things I'd change. Increasingly though, the same old things keep coming up. So here's my basic checklist.
What is the user journey?
This is the most important question to ask first of all - what is it we are trying to get people to do here? Remove yourself from the page, the design and the clutter and write it down in simple steps. Go back to the page now and review the design against those steps.
Using font that people can read?
At least 10 point. Maybe 12 point if you can. Small sucks. Make it easy!
Is the contrast OK?
Text should always be either light text on a dark background or (preferably) dark text on a light background
Are text links underlined?
Ideally they should be. Exceptions are place where it's obvious that this is navigation (tabs or menus for example).
DON'T USE CAPS, Use sentence case
It's easier to read
Use only the words you need
On the web, less is more. Look at every detail of the page - forms, buttons etc - and only use the words that are needed
Is it obvious what this site is about?
If the site is well known, this is less important (e.g. Dell, Amazon, Google), everyone else should explain what the site is about. Either in simple terms (e.g. Bargainholidays.com - "more holiday than you bargained for") or in a sentence near the top of the page.
Is it obvious what this page is about?
Page title, big, saying what the page is about.
Is it obvious what I should / could do here?
The call to action, whether it be a price point, form button or text link, should be obvious. A few obvious calls to action are more effective than many obscure ones.
Is is clear where I am on the site...?
(...relative to the rest of the site). Which section am I in? How deep am I? How do I get to other sections/products like this? How do I get to the homepage?
Does the page use standard conventions?
Form buttons that look like buttons, text links that look like links (in blue), click able images having text appear to describe the link destination (alt tags).
Is the page design consistent with the rest of the site?
Thinking here about layouts, colours, imagery and copy
Do links describe what you're going to get on clicking?
("Click here" is absolutely banned in my world)
Do forms state what's optional versus required?
Make it easy using asterisks or other well recognised devices
Does error handling make sense?
Try and break the page - see what error messages you get
Is the URL meaningful, canonical and unique?
It should describe the content, avoid parameters & dynamic URLS
Does the page load fast?
Simple to say, simple to test
Does the HTML validate against W3.org standards?
Build it right first time
Does it work in all browsers, in all of the main sizes?
IE 6 and 7, Firefox 1.5 and 2 as minimum, ideally Safari too, on Windows and Apple Mac.
Can we track the activity that we want to improve?
Install web analytics if need be, and use it.
I immediately have a surge of mental activity that leads to a whole load of things I'd change. Increasingly though, the same old things keep coming up. So here's my basic checklist.
What is the user journey?
This is the most important question to ask first of all - what is it we are trying to get people to do here? Remove yourself from the page, the design and the clutter and write it down in simple steps. Go back to the page now and review the design against those steps.
Using font that people can read?
At least 10 point. Maybe 12 point if you can. Small sucks. Make it easy!
Is the contrast OK?
Text should always be either light text on a dark background or (preferably) dark text on a light background
Are text links underlined?
Ideally they should be. Exceptions are place where it's obvious that this is navigation (tabs or menus for example).
DON'T USE CAPS, Use sentence case
It's easier to read
Use only the words you need
On the web, less is more. Look at every detail of the page - forms, buttons etc - and only use the words that are needed
Is it obvious what this site is about?
If the site is well known, this is less important (e.g. Dell, Amazon, Google), everyone else should explain what the site is about. Either in simple terms (e.g. Bargainholidays.com - "more holiday than you bargained for") or in a sentence near the top of the page.
Is it obvious what this page is about?
Page title, big, saying what the page is about.
Is it obvious what I should / could do here?
The call to action, whether it be a price point, form button or text link, should be obvious. A few obvious calls to action are more effective than many obscure ones.
Is is clear where I am on the site...?
(...relative to the rest of the site). Which section am I in? How deep am I? How do I get to other sections/products like this? How do I get to the homepage?
Does the page use standard conventions?
Form buttons that look like buttons, text links that look like links (in blue), click able images having text appear to describe the link destination (alt tags).
Is the page design consistent with the rest of the site?
Thinking here about layouts, colours, imagery and copy
Do links describe what you're going to get on clicking?
("Click here" is absolutely banned in my world)
Do forms state what's optional versus required?
Make it easy using asterisks or other well recognised devices
Does error handling make sense?
Try and break the page - see what error messages you get
Is the URL meaningful, canonical and unique?
It should describe the content, avoid parameters & dynamic URLS
Does the page load fast?
Simple to say, simple to test
Does the HTML validate against W3.org standards?
Build it right first time
Does it work in all browsers, in all of the main sizes?
IE 6 and 7, Firefox 1.5 and 2 as minimum, ideally Safari too, on Windows and Apple Mac.
Can we track the activity that we want to improve?
Install web analytics if need be, and use it.
Friday, 16 November 2007
The Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything
Friday fun.
Google is pretty damn clever these days.
Try this search for answer to life, the universe and everything.
Love it.
Google is pretty damn clever these days.
Try this search for answer to life, the universe and everything.
Love it.
Thursday, 15 November 2007
Geo-tag Your Location
Geo-tagging is a way of tagging a website to describe it's location.
This is particularly useful in the case of say a restaurant or hotel website or any other webpage that is about business in a specific location. If a page is tagged, other websites and search engines will recognise its position. You will most likely get better rankings for localised search requests.
Geo-tagging uses latitude and longitude coordinates.
One of the simplest ways to tag a page is to add meta tags in the page header using the following syntax:
meta name="geo.placename" content="New York, NY, USA"
meta name="geo.position" content="40.757929;-73.985506"
meta name="geo.region" content="US-NY"
(The numbers above are latitide and longitude coordinates).
If you are not sure what your location coordinates are, you can find it on a map the following website and generate your tags: Mygeoposition.com
Increasingly as mobile phone users take their world with them in their pocket, a user's location will be an important point of reference and can be triangulated from GPS technology to nearby businesses and services on the web.
Consider that the iPhone (estimated to have 500,000 users in the UK by the end of the year) has Google Maps built-in.
Giving a site a location in cyber-space has never been more important. If a business has a locations it needs to communicate that address to the wider world.
This is particularly useful in the case of say a restaurant or hotel website or any other webpage that is about business in a specific location. If a page is tagged, other websites and search engines will recognise its position. You will most likely get better rankings for localised search requests.
Geo-tagging uses latitude and longitude coordinates.
One of the simplest ways to tag a page is to add meta tags in the page header using the following syntax:
meta name="geo.placename" content="New York, NY, USA"
meta name="geo.position" content="40.757929;-73.985506"
meta name="geo.region" content="US-NY"
(The numbers above are latitide and longitude coordinates).
If you are not sure what your location coordinates are, you can find it on a map the following website and generate your tags: Mygeoposition.com
Increasingly as mobile phone users take their world with them in their pocket, a user's location will be an important point of reference and can be triangulated from GPS technology to nearby businesses and services on the web.
Consider that the iPhone (estimated to have 500,000 users in the UK by the end of the year) has Google Maps built-in.
Giving a site a location in cyber-space has never been more important. If a business has a locations it needs to communicate that address to the wider world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)