It’s common sense to put the publication date of the article somewhere at the top of the page and make it easy to spot straight off. Users want to see the relevant information immediately. The same principle applies for newspapers, for instance, and the web medium is not different in that aspect.

A clever little trick web authors sometimes use is to put the publication date at the very bottom of the article. This doesn’t make a lot of sense from the usability standpoint, does it? The reason for this is that people tend to stay longer on the page if they don’t see the date right away. It is often the case that users will dismiss the content if they see an old publication date. If that date is a page scroll away, they will not leave that soon, scan a bit or two more and maybe something will make them stay even longer.

Clever, but tricks like this are wasting our time. In a medium where everything should be made for the benefit of the user, I consider this bad practise. I do not want to scroll and search for the publication date, I want to be able see it instantly.

I’ll share some good practise as well, but Twitter related. Twitter is an awesome way of communicating, sharing and getting information. What I like about it is that the messages are short and sweet. Sometimes though, they are too short or provide low value.

Maratz usually tweets in English. To let his followers know his tweet is in Croatian, he uses the twitter tag [lang=hr] so the users not interested in those kind of tweets can skip them right away (example).

Ivan also offers a clever time saver. When he links to movie trailers in his tweets, he uses the tag [TRAILER] (example).

These examples are also clever, but a good sort of clever.

In the picture, you can see the clear difference between the information the two tweets provide. The left one, the original, provides additional information to the user and makes it easier to scan. The right one, the one I tampered with, does not do as good a job.

As far as I know, these kind of tags are not standard in Twitter, but seem a very good idea. Maybe Twitter users will make this into a trend, a then help make it a standard, like they did with hashtags. Twitter users would benefit from tags like [Photos], [iTunes], [Pics], [Music] and so on.

The point I am making is: let’s make our online life easier and save us valuable time.

Quick content tip: do not provide undated information on your websites.

If you do not include a date in your content, your text may not be considered relevant and you will look unprofessional.

When a user lands on your website and starts to read an article of yours, he or she needs to know whether the information is up-to-date or not. The relevance of what you write depends on the date. This does not only apply for the articles dealing with the world of internet and technology, where things change rapidly, but all topics.

Upon seeing undated content, the user may well dismiss your article or post and look for other sources of information. I know I certainly would.

Please, please don’t use non-descriptive titles in your posts. Please, for the love of all that’s… sane. I’m fed up with clever titles that give you no idea whatsoever what the post or article is about.

Imagine if I called this little rant of mine “I Hate Jean-Claude Van Damme Flicks” (the thing is, I really dislike his films, as I do non-descriptive headings). Perhaps this would amuse some of you, but what happens if one day, several months from now, you’d want to browse the archives in search of this post and you couldn’t remember the title? You’d know what I’ve written about, but you’d have a tough time finding the post because it’s title is not what the post is about.

You’d lose time, you’d get frustrated, then you’d write a post telling people not to use non-descriptive titles.

A quick Google search can lead you to plenty of fine resources on the subject of good titles, such as D. Keith Robinson’s Writing Better Web Page Titles, so please, knock yourself out.

In recent times, using the logo as a link back to the homepage has become the default way of handling the issue. Web designers use this method without thinking about it much, because everyone does it. They wrap the A element around the IMG element, and that does the trick. Maybe, but maybe not. While I think the method itself isn’t necessarily bad, using it does raise some usability questions. Continue reading →

It’s not just our beloved Stylegala who failed to style their visited links. It’s something that we come accross quite often, unfortunately. Too often, in my mind. So, why is this so important, you ask? Continue reading →