Jacob or Jakob Nielsen may refer to:
On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here?
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
On the Web, all advantages are temporary, and you must keep innovating to stay ahead
The web is the ultimate customer-empowering environment. He or she who clicks the mouse gets to decide everything. It is so easy to go elsewhere; all the competitors in the world are but a mouseclick away.
What we learned is money doesn't grow on trees.
Diversity is power on the Web. Big sites may be bigger, but smaller sites will keep scoring higher for specialized topics, both in terms of their connections with users and in terms of each visit's commercial value.
On the Internet, it's survival of the easiest. . . . Give users a good experience and they're apt to turn into frequent and loyal customers. But. . . it's easy to turn to another supplier in the face of even a minor hiccup. Only if a site is extremely easy to use will anybody bother staying around.
The more users' expectations prove right, the more they will feel in control of the system and the more they will like it.
Usability rules the web. Simply stated, if the customer can't find a product, then he or she will not buy it.
Ultimately, users visit your website for its content. Everything else is just the backdrop.
People have to want to change before there's any chance of helping them do so.
Popularity is the product of two factors: (a) how compelling material you offer, and (b) how easy it is to access it. Host free pirated movies and users will flock to the site, even if it's difficult to use.
On average, when you ask someone to perform a task on a site, they cannot do it. It's not their fault; it's the designer's fault.
To design an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations about future behavior.
Compared to 1999. . . we cannot quite declare victory, but we can declare progress.
Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
Clear content, simple navigation and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less.
. . . the book is a manifesto to make the Web atone for the sins of computers and regain a level of simplicity that can put humanity at peace with its tools once again.