Review of Homepage Usability - 50 Websites Deconstructed

Submitted by Patrick on Sun, 10/29/2006 - 8:57pm.

Reviewed By: Missy Grote
Date: July 17, 2003 (Previously Published)
Section: Book Reviews
Publisher: New Riders
Authors: Jakob Nielsen, Marie Tahir
Pages: 138
Retail Price: $39.99
Dot Journal Buy It Now Price: $27.99

I remember back in college I took a class that exposed us to many different websites and how they might be effective for our chosen professions. We actually had time to delve into websites that we've heard might be useful, and after checking the link out we would judge for ourselves if the site had information worthwhile enough to bookmark. Boy, was that fun! Since college, I haven't fully explored that many websites until I browsed through the book, Homepage Usability, 50 Websites Deconstructed. Quite frankly, I haven't had the time. That is one of the wonderful features of this book. You actually get to learn about the website without ever dialing in and waiting for the page to load! With this book you get to explore 50 homepages along with an inkling of the information contained within the site.

Ironically, this book Homepage Usability, 50 Websites Deconstructed, written by Jakob Nielsen & Marie Tahir, was not written with the intent of flooding the reader with bookmarks. Instead, the focus is on the looking at 50 popular homepages and analyzing how "user-friendly" they are. By dissecting 50 homepages with heavy traffic, the authors give tons of great examples that show how to create a home page that people will want to come back to.

The book begins by looking at general guidelines for creating a winning homepage. Just by reading through this section web designers will get practical suggestions for how to make sure their efforts are worthwhile. The next section gives a bunch of homepage design statistics, which may or may not impact your future design (or redesign). As designer you might want to know that it is highly recommended that you use white for your search box color and that you put your logo in the upper left corner. You may even want to heed the advice that you use only 5-15% of space on graphics. Just by looking at these recommendations you'll be able to take a lot of guesswork out of design process.

The next section is what I call the real meat and bones of the book, where 50 homepages are analyzed for their design and content. Along with the purpose and key site features, Nielsen & Tahir go in great depth looking at all of the design elements of the homepage along with possible suggestions for improving the overall user-friendliness.

Speaking of user-friendly, this book is tops! The book is beautifully organized & laid out with full-color pages and guide words on each page. You can easily look up a web page by the company name or the URL. There is also an appendix in back which includes some quick fingertip facts.

Just hearing that the authors typically charge $10,000 to review a company's homepage, you might quickly agree that this book is a bargain for $39.99. I think though, the biggest bargain you will receive by reading this book, is that afterwards you will have the knowledge on how to design a homepage with a winning 1st impression, and one that works. After all, you don't want users to come just once to your site, but instead frequent on a regular basis. Homepage Usability will show you how.