Best results of usability testing can be achieved with only 5 users.

The main reason is that it is better to distribute your budget for user testing across many small tests instead of blowing everything on a single, elaborate study. Let us say that you do have the funding to recruit 15 representative customers and…

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The 1% of websites that don't suck can be made even better by strengthening exceptional user performance, eliminating miscues, and targeting company-wide use and unmet needs.
99% of readers can stop here; this column is for people who have a great website or intranet.

Certainly, if your design ultimately works for your test users, you don't have high-priority usability issues. But miscues are still symptoms of something you ought to correct (once you've fixed the design disasters, of…

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Imagine if astute political observer and philosopher Niccol? Machiavelli parachuted back into our world to see all the strange new media specimens of Earth twittering away during their idle moments.
How would he react? What would he conclude?

Pete Blackshaw, whose professional background encompasses public policy, interactive marketing, and brand management, is executive vice president of strategic services for Nielsen Online, a combination of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a firm Pete helped…

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If you hopped into a time machine that spat you out sometime between 1996 and now, you could almost pinpoint the year by the words used to describe an organizations Web traffic. Hits? That would be 1998 or so. Page views? 2003-2005. Unique visitors? 2006-2007. Odds are that 2008-2009 is going to be the year of time spent.?

That’s where George Ivie, executive director and CEO of the Media Ratings Council (MRC), comes in. The council is a not-for-profit trade association formed in the wake of the 1960 Harris Committee Hearings. The committee…

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