Commentary on the
top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005) is now coming to an end and I want to give my own personal opinions on which blog usability mistakes you must avoid (important), which mistakes are not as critical but go against good usability practice (recommended) and which you can ignore from usability point of view (ignore):
- No author biographies: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view.
- No author photo: ignore - you can safely ignore also this from usability point of view.
- Nondescript posting titles: important - you must avoid making this mistake.
- Links don't say where they go: important - you must avoid making this mistake.
- Classic hits are buried: recommended - try to avoid making this mistake.
- The calendar is the only navigation: important - you must avoid making this mistake.
- Irregular publishing frequency: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view if you post "on hiatus until" messages when necessary and encourage users to subscribe feeds.
- Mixing topics: recommended - try to avoid making this mistake.
- Forgetting that you write for your future boss: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view.
- Having a domain name owned by weblog service: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view.
When we take important and recommended items from that list we come up with my personal condensed list of
"Top 5 Blog Usability Mistakes That Are Really Related To Usability And That You Really Should Avoid" or T5BUMTARRTUATYRSA for short (and yes, capitalizing every word in the sentence is not good practice) in order of importance:
- Links don't say where they go
- Nondescript posting titles
- The calendar is the only navigation
- Classic hits are buried
- Mixing topics
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