Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - complex URLs

Complex URLs is the fourth mistake in the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design list by Jakob Nielsen (1996). "How can an URL be complex?" asks your average propellerhead developer. Sometimes users try to decode the internal structure of the website from the URL and use it as means of navigation, especially if the site doesn't offer any other usable mean of navigation for the user, or maybe the user has formed a habit of just backspacing the URL until the next interesting directory. In these cases the ideal URL would be something like server.domain.tld/directory/subdirectory/topic.html where user can backspace the URL to server.domain.tld/directory/subdirectory/ or server.domain.tld/directory/ to access those parts of the website immediately. Whereas an URL like server.domain.tld/index.php?id=18 doesn't tell the users anything about what the content of that particular page might be. Blogger is a good example of simple and meaningful URLs, for example the Usability Spot post archive from November can be accessed from URL http://usabilityspot.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html and URLs for individual postings are formed like blogname.blogspot.com/year/month/post_topic_DateWhenNecessary.html. But surprisingly the post archive URL for whole year is not so simple or consistent any more and when you try the logical URL  format for archive by year URL (blogname.blogspot.com/year_archive.html), the result is an error 404 page not found message. This usability mistake in web design is as valid now as it has been since the beginning of the World Wide Web as we know it, so try to keep your URLs as simple, meaningful and consistent as possible.