Nielsen Snipes E-comm Sites, Teams with Macromedia
Jakob Nielsen, in a busy week, releases a report criticizing e-commerce sites, and teams up with Macromedia to help them make Flash 99% less bad.
E-commerce Is 51% Bad
The first report, from News.com, describes a study released by the Nielsen Norman Group. The study claims that, from a field of 15 e-commerce sites, in total they met 49 percent of the usability guidelines developed by Nielsen’s consulting company.
The L.L. Bean web site scored highest by meeting 66 percent of the guidelines, while Home & Garden had the lowest score, meeting only 38 percent of the guidelines. Amazon.com was left out of the survey, for reasons unknown, even though it ranked in first place two years ago.
Flash May Become 99% Somewhat Bad
Also this week, as covered at News.com, Macromedia and Nielsen announced that they would team up to create usability guidelines that can take advantage of the UI improvements offered in Flash MX. Of course, these are just guidelines, and there’s no guarantee they’ll be followed by anyone, but there is at least acknowledgment from Macromedia that improvements can be made in Flash.
Some of us here should be familiar with Nielsen’s article, Flash: 99% Bad, written way back in October of 2000. Well, as of June 3, it’s been updated with a sub-heading, Flash Now Improved, even though NNGroup hasn’t actually started working on Flash yet.
Macromedia also has a press release on their site.
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