Guidelines

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Web usability guidelines

Download an Excel workbook containing all 247 web usability guidelines

You can also download translated versions of this checklist in various languages.

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How to use these guidelines

Work through each of the guidelines in each list and mark your site as either conforming or not conforming to the guideline.

Remember that all guidelines are context specific. If you feel that a guideline does not apply to your site, it's OK to ignore it.

The guidelines are purposefully expressed as positive statements, so that when you feed the results back to the design team you can identify some strengths of the design before you launch into the problems.

And remember that guidelines can get you only so far. Nothing replaces a good design process.

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About the author

David Travis

Dr. David Travis (@userfocus) has been carrying out ethnographic field research and running product usability tests since 1989. He has published three books on user experience including Think Like a UX Researcher. If you like his articles, you might enjoy his free online user experience course.



Web usability guidelines

“One of the best spreadsheets I've ever seen!” – @handrus
“This covers it all! Great resource-->RT.” – @WP4SmallBiz
“Definitely Bookmarked!!” – @gregprogramming
“Well thought out info for improving site usability.” – @stevemclintock
“Une mine d'or!” – @profstiw
“This is fab, fab, fab RT.” – @blakey
“Great collection of 247 web usability guidelines.” – @olli101

What should I do next?

If you're interested in guidelines and expert reviews, try these links.

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