Speaking of usability…

Today’s massive props go out to Andy King, who recently notified me about this: “Clickstream Study Reveals Dynamic Web.”

And I quote:

“A recent clickstream study revealed new information about how we use and peruse the Web. University of Hamburg researchers found that the Web is moving from a static hypertext information system to dynamic interactive services with rapid interactivity between man and machine. The authors recommend that web developers create concise, fast loading web pages to keep pace with the speed of web navigation.”

Some points taken from this study:

• Users click fast and often. Links should be obvious because users will look for them.
• Users with 1024 by 768 px screens tend to have 890 px of available viewport width.
• Users tend to spend about 4 seconds on a page. You better hope that page has loaded before that 4 seconds is up.

You should definitely read the whole study. It should be very useful for anyone who is concerned about user-centered design (that’s 99.9% of web designers, even if they don’t realize it).

And lastly, I hate to play the “I told you so” game, but here’s a few past entries which I was reminded of when looking at this study:

• First Impressions Count
• Bad Ideas of Web Design
• Disenchanted