Creating a new site use unique design, but when it comes to usability, it is better to use approved models (like most of web developers do). When people visit a new site, they always look for well-known things; they use their experience to perceive new content. People want to use the same modules on different web pages (such as color options, company logo location, principles of navigation, etc).

Google always makes its links blue, and there is a reason: this color is familiar to most of users (that is why it’s much easier for them to find all the links).

Any other color is not a problem, but users will need some more time to find your links.

An ideal input field for search queries must be 27 characters long

Jacob Nielsen conducted a research to determine the ideal length for search boxes. So he ascertained that most of modern input fields are very short. Despite the fact that you can write quite a long search query, you can’t see all your text. It’s a problem with usability, because it’s difficult to edit such a search query.

The study showed that an average input field has width of 18 characters. According to the research results 27% of search queries are too long to fit in these input fields. But 27 characters wide fields can contain 90% of search queries. Remember that you can determine width not only in pixels and points, but also in “em” (a relative unit of length for current font).

Input field in Google search is wide enough for long searches

Apple input field is too short, the query “Microsoft Office 2008″ does not fit in it

In general, it is better to do too long field than too short one, so your users would be able to find all the information without any problems. This is a very simple and useful advice for website designers, but, unfortunately, they often ignore it.

Tags: Apple, Google, usability, website design, website development

This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Web development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.