The learner will be able to list three ways to make a web site easier to use.
Visit www.francisfrancis.com. Admit this is egregious.
The purpose of your site should be instantly clear to your visitors.
Clearly establish on your home page what you hope to accomplish on your web site.
It should be instantly apparent how to reach the key content of your site.
Highlight the main sections of your site and make it clear how to reach them.
Your site should be easy to navigate.
Navigation should be clear and consistent.
ALT attributes should describe the function of the image, not go into excruciating detail.
Longwinded ALT tags are read verbatim by screen readers. If they contain information that does not pertain to their function, the visitor needs to listen to it before he is able to continue.
Date your content.
It's helpful to know how fresh your information is.
Make the computer do the work, not your visitors.
SSN fields in one box, not three
Telephone numbers in one box, not three
For forms: Accept (518) 555-1212 or 518-555-1212 or 518.555.1212 or 5185551212
Credit card numbers with or without spaces
Avoid Horizontal scrolling
Visitors have been conditioned to scroll down, but find scrolling across both unexpected and annoying.
Avoid unexpected e-mail links
If it's an e-mail link, make it look like an e-mail link. It's annoying to expect to go to a page for, say, help, only to discover that not only is help unavailable, but you have to write and stuff.
Avoid URLs more than 75 characters long
It's tough to cut and paste long URLs into e-mail messages, and thus difficult for visitors to share locations on your site with their friends.
TIP: If you enclose your URL in parentheses, most mail handlers will know what to do even if it IS more than 75 characters.
Allow the visitor to change the font size
Don't use tiny fonts
Use relative sizes, not absolute, in style sheets
Ask participants to share their pet peeves among visited web sites.
Solicit the learners' top gripes. Then ask the pointed question: does your web site do any of these things?
To access Lesson Plan as a Microsoft® Word document: Usability_lessonplan.doc
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