Article archive
Below is a list of all our previous articles in reverse chronological order. Enjoy!
Design Trend: Interfaces with Less Information
Aug 16, 2011 (14 comments)
When looking at some of the major new designs launched in recent days, an interesting trend seems to emerge: interfaces are getting slimmed down, showing less information at a glance. Google’... Read this article
E-Commerce Without the Website
Aug 02, 2011
Smartphones have made computers mobile, and more importantly, they’ve made access to the Internet mobile. This present companies with unprecedented opportunities to bridge the gap between the... Read this article
Observation: Users Will Go Far to Avoid Repeat Form Errors
Jul 12, 2011
When conducting the research for our checkout usability report we saw an interesting tendency among the test subjects when it came to form field errors: people took preventive actions to avoid for... Read this article
E-Commerce Copywriting: Returning Customer?
Jun 28, 2011
When conducting our checkout usability research I noted that quite a few e-commerce sites use “Returning customer?” as the header for their account login form, even though they offered... Read this article
Account 'Sign Up': Ask to Confirm E-mail, Not Password
Jun 16, 2011 (17 comments)
During account ‘sign up’, a misspelled password is annoying, whereas a misspelled e-mail address is hazardous. More and more sites use people’s e-mail address as their “use... Read this article
Poor Copywriting – the UX Problem That Will Never Go Away?
Jun 07, 2011 (21 comments)
We’ve previously looked at how Google Chrome’s page translate feature had ambiguous copywriting that could leave first time users in doubt over whether Google would translate the page f... Read this article
Circles of Care: Segmenting User Engagement
May 24, 2011 (1 comment)
The more involved a user is the more you can ask of him (e.g. fill out a questionnaire, give you money). The opposite is true as well, the less involved a user is the less you can ask of her. The ... Read this article
Responsive Web Design and Mobile Devices
May 07, 2011 (21 comments)
Nowadays, people access the Internet from an ever-growing range of devices with very different screen sizes and controls (mouse vs fingers). This poses some very real design and usability issues b... Read this article
One Page Checkouts – the Holy Grail of Checkout Usability?
Apr 26, 2011 (17 comments)
After having written an article on e-commerce checkout design for Smashing Magazine I got a question from Ryan asking about the “controversy of multi-step checkouts vs. one page checkouts... Read this article
10 Ideas for Crafting a Better 'About' Page
Apr 14, 2011 (1 comment)
New visitors want to know who you are and why they should care. This makes your ‘About’ page one of the most important pages on your website as it is often here new visitors go before ... Read this article
How to Preserve Credit Card Details on Form Errors
Apr 05, 2011 (5 comments)
One of the most fragile parts of an e-commerce checkout is how you handle credit card details. Due to security requirements from VISA and MasterCard (PCI compliance), most e-commerce sites aren... Read this article
10 Cart Abandonment Statistics - Please Submit More
Mar 31, 2011
We’ve set out to create the most comprehensive list containing all available statistics on shopping cart abandonment rates. So far we’re up to 10 sources, citing an average e-commerce ... Read this article
Home Page Strategy: Category vs. Product
Mar 22, 2011 (5 comments)
On e-commerce stores with thousands of products the home page quickly gets cluttered. We’ve looked at this in the past: e-commerce home page focus (Walmart vs. Apple). Today, let’s tak... Read this article
UX Lessons Learned from Buying Petfood
Mar 15, 2011 (3 comments)
I was buying pet food the other day (online of course) and stumbled upon one of the strangest flows in checkout process history: you had to provide different parts of your credit card details at d... Read this article
Form Field Usability: Avoid Multi-Column Layouts
Mar 08, 2011 (22 comments)
When conducting user research on checkout usability we made an interesting observation in regards to form fields arranged in multiple columns. The short version: avoid multi-column layouts for for... Read this article
E-Commerce Checkout Usability: Exploring the Customer's Checkout Experience 2011
Mar 01, 2011 (2 comments)
Imagine a brick and mortar store selling consumer goods. It has a great location, a well-designed store, good prices, and great products on the shelves. There are plenty of customers. Each day 1,0... Read this article
A/B Testing: Begin with a Problem and Hypothesis
Feb 16, 2011 (3 comments)
When I talk to people new to the world of A/B testing, I all too often hear something like: “I saw this example of a site that changed the color of their ‘Buy’ button and got a Y... Read this article
9 Ways to Simplify 'Sign In'
Feb 08, 2011 (8 comments)
Sign in, or “login”, is vital for many web business since their entire userbase has to go through this step regularly. So here’s 8, 9 ways to simplify your sign in process. Befor... Read this article
19 Ways to Simplify 'Sign Up'
Jan 31, 2011 (75 comments)
Account creation, or “sign up”, is vital to many web businesses – yet it’s a pain for most web users. Here’s 9, 12, 17, 19 ways to simplify your sign up process and ma... Read this article
E-Commerce: Why Customers Abandon Their Shopping Cart
Jan 19, 2011 (6 comments)
During our recent study on checkout usability the test subjects gave us some insight into the many different reasons customers abandon their shopping cart. While the reasons for shopping cart aban... Read this article
User Expectations: Create an Illusion of Space
Jan 07, 2011 (13 comments)
During our current research on checkout usability we made several interesting discoveries that go beyond checkout usability. One thing we noticed was that most people (8 out of 10 test subjects) i... Read this article
Baymard: 2010 and 2011
Dec 28, 2010
Here at Baymard we write three different categories of UX articles: 1) Research & Guidelines, 2) Case studies, and 3) Opinion & Observations. We know a lot of you started subscribing to ou... Read this article
Mobile: Venturing Into Responsive Design
Dec 21, 2010
Due to the heavy snow in Europe these days, I ended up stuck in Amsterdam airport for a flight connecting to Tanzania. This was the perfect opportunity to get my hands dirty with something I had b... Read this article
E-commerce Home Page Focus
Dec 14, 2010
When people are visiting your site, do you know what they are looking for? Is it obvious to your visitors what you want to promote? Or is your home page cluttered with all sorts of different produ... Read this article
Mobile: Thoughts on Native apps vs Web apps
Dec 07, 2010 (2 comments)
Apps for iPad/iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia, Windows Phone, Palm, etc… it’s really amazing to see so many designers and developers working to create great experiences on mobile de... Read this article
Scannability: How to Highlight Text on the Web
Nov 30, 2010 (2 comments)
Highlights can effectively be used in web design to guide the readers attention towards specific sentences or words. It comes from the realization that all content is not equally important and th... Read this article
Redefining the Customer Experience with Augmented Reality
Nov 22, 2010 (3 comments)
One of the greatest barriers in e-commerce is that the customer never gets to try out the product before buying it, as opposed to shopping in a physical store. This is why research, experiments an... Read this article
"What's this?" Link & Tooltip
Nov 09, 2010 (2 comments)
I just stumbled upon this interesting spin on the good old “What’s this?” help link. In Wildbit’s Postmark app you’re greeted with a tooltip the moment you hover the ... Read this article
Readability: the Optimal Line Length
Nov 01, 2010 (32 comments)
Having the right amount of characters on each line is key to the readability of your text. It shouldn’t merely be your design that dictates the width of your text, it should also be a matter... Read this article
The Serial Position Effect in Web Design
Oct 23, 2010 (4 comments)
The “serial position effect” describes how list items that are first and last in a list are more likely to be remembered than the items in the middle. Furthermore, the medium of the li... Read this article
HTML5: Anchor Content, Not Anchor Text
Oct 13, 2010
When talking about links, the term “anchor text” has been used for ages now. I think it’s time we retire this term in favor of a new one that makes more sense in the Internet of t... Read this article
From Sketch to Website (Hint: Skip Photoshop)
Oct 05, 2010 (24 comments)
The purpose of sketching is to quickly try out many different solutions to the same problem. In web design, this means that the purpose of your sketch is to figure out what the page should communi... Read this article
3 Examples of Inline Help
Sep 24, 2010 (8 comments)
Help text: either it’s there when you don’t need it, or you can’t find it when you do need it. Let’s take a look at 3 different ways Google, Amazon and 37signals solve this ... Read this article
Top 11 E-commerce Usability and Optimization Resources
Sep 12, 2010
At Baymard Institute we have a long list of blogs, newsletters and articles databases we read for information and insights on usability and conversion rate optimization. While all of them are good... Read this article
Form Field Usability: Matching User Expectations
Aug 31, 2010 (13 comments)
I see the mistake again and again – web designers that either don’t adjust the width of their form fields at all or adjust it based on what looks best in the layout of the page. To achieve go... Read this article
Visual Balance: Dealing with Variable Headline Lengths
Aug 24, 2010 (2 comments)
How do you maintain the visual balance in your design when the length of your headlines vary dramatically? A long headline will naturally demand more attention than a short one because it takes up ... Read this article
Formatting Links for Usability
Aug 17, 2010 (18 comments)
Links are how people navigate your site. Which is why it’s crucial that you follow 3 basic link usability guidelines: 1) underlining links, 2) coloring links, and 3) keeping link styling cons... Read this article
Drop-Down Usability: When You Should (and Shouldn't) Use Them
Aug 05, 2010 (30 comments)
Drop-down lists are great – when used correctly. If there’s anywhere between 7 and 15 options, a drop-down list is usually a really good fit. You can put a healthy amount of information in y... Read this article
Conversion: Reducing Sign Up Friction
Jul 28, 2010 (4 comments)
How many free web services can you sign up for nowadays, by only providing a username, email and password? Countless. The home page for these web services usually have one purpose: get people to s... Read this article
4 User Interface Sketching Pitfalls
Jun 24, 2010 (3 comments)
When sketching a new user interface there’s a few things to watch out for. Here’s 4 common pitfalls: 1. Drawing things in too much detail People have a tendency to try and squeeze ever... Read this article
The Conversion Rate Optimization Industry in 2015
Jun 06, 2010 (3 comments)
What will the conversion rate optimization industry look like in year 2015? Here’s my take on an industry that in many ways look like the SEO industry did 5 years ago, before its explosive g... Read this article
Why Jack Johnson's Splash Screen(!) is Great
May 26, 2010
I’m almost as excited about Jack Johnson’s new album as I am about the splash screen he’s using to promote it. Now, 98% of the time, splash screens are a notoriously bad idea – bo... Read this article
Links and the Hover State
May 17, 2010 (1 comment)
I previously wrote about links and the visited state. This post is about links and the hover state – what it is, why it’s important, and how to use it. What is the “hover state”? ... Read this article
Comparing Conversion Rates is Nonsense
May 09, 2010
In the e-commerce industry I often see people comparing conversion rate samples between different sites as a way to measure the attractiveness of their store and products. This is problematic beca... Read this article
Customers Perceive Only Parts of a Checkout-page as Being Secure
Apr 28, 2010 (2 comments)
In our latest usability study on e-commerce checkouts we made an interesting observation: several of the test subjects talked about certain parts of the checkout-page as being “secure” ... Read this article
Google Chrome and the Importance of Good Copywriting
Apr 16, 2010 (2 comments)
If you’re using Google’s Chrome browser and access a page that isn’t in English (or whatever your default language is) you see a message saying something along the lines of “... Read this article
Handling Technical Glitches Without Losing Sales
Apr 10, 2010
During our latest usability study we used live websites which caused a number of our test subjects to run into technical errors or site maintenance. In 8 out of 9 instances (89%), this led to insta... Read this article
How Google Keep their iPhone Visitors Coming Back
Mar 30, 2010 (4 comments)
Google’s mobile interface for Google Buzz sports a brilliant call to action that is customized specifically to the mobile phone you’re using. When you go to the mobile version of Googl... Read this article
People Think Registration Leads to "Spam"
Mar 25, 2010
Customers hate signing up for an account when all they want to do is buy a product from your e-commerce store. One of the reasons people hate registration so much is because they think it will sig... Read this article
Contextual Words like "Continue" are Usability Poison
Mar 15, 2010 (8 comments)
The word “Continue” is contextual, so depending on your frame of mind, “Continue” can have many different meanings. During our latest usability study, 3 out of 10 test subj... Read this article
Review of Rework
Mar 02, 2010 (1 comment)
The short version: Rework is the most important business book I’ve read in months. Not because of the solutions presented in the book, but because of the questions Rework force you to think a... Read this article
Silverback: Screen Recording for Usability Studies
Feb 24, 2010 (2 comments)
When doing qualitative usability studies it’s a great idea to record your sessions with the users. Silverback is a software application made specifically for this. We purchased Silverback fo... Read this article
Why People Buy Online
Feb 14, 2010 (2 comments)
There’s 3 reasons people buy online as opposed to offline: selection, convenience and price. You should deliver on at least one of them. 1) Selection Limited shelf space isn’t much of ... Read this article
People Still Double-Click Online
Feb 04, 2010 (3 comments)
During our most recent research study we once again found that a surprisingly large number (more than 50%) of the people aged 40+ still double-click on links and form buttons online. This gives us ... Read this article
A Preparation Checklist for Conducting Web Usability Studies
Jan 26, 2010
Doing small and simple usability studies usually give you a great return on investment – testing as little as 5 subjects can yield up to 85% of all usability problems on a site according to a... Read this article
Links and the Visited State
Jan 12, 2010 (3 comments)
The visited state on links is one of the biggest opportunities in web design – it’s basically personalized history for each of your visitors, enabled by default! Yet, many web designers... Read this article
Video: CAPTCHA Done Wrong
Dec 13, 2009
When we stumbled upon Netflix’s home page the other day we immediately thought that this would be a good showcase for how not to do your CAPTCHA. Which is exactly what we do in this video: Ne... Read this article
Decoration - the Enemy of Good Web Design
Dec 03, 2009 (6 comments)
When you ask some web “designers” why they added a certain element to their site they’ll answer “because it looks good”. These people are of course artists, not design... Read this article
Making a Slow Site Appear Fast
Nov 28, 2009
A recent study by Forrester and Akamai showed that 47% of your website visitors expects your page to load in less than 2 seconds, and 40% will abandon if it takes 3+ seconds. So how does a site li... Read this article
Video: Designing a new Website
Nov 21, 2009
To finish off the “Designing a new Website” series, we’ve put together a video for you where we walk through this site, explaining our thoughts and principles behind some of its f... Read this article
How to Lower Your Chargeback Rate
Nov 13, 2009 (4 comments)
You’ve just made a sale in you e-commerce store. But 27 days down the road you are faced with a chargeback request from your merchant account provider. You’ve not only lost the sale, yo... Read this article
CAPTCHA Can Kill Your Conversion Rate
Nov 04, 2009 (16 comments)
More and more websites are using CAPTCHA to avoid spam, but they’re typically bad for your business as CAPTCHAs have major usability problems. Most visitors simply get them wrong. Why CAPTCH... Read this article
Designing a new Website #3: Finished Layout
Oct 24, 2009
(This is part three in a series of posts about designing a new webpage from scratch, before you have any concrete data to guide your design-decisions.) In this post we’ll take your design dra... Read this article
Subliminally Directing Visitor Attention Towards Your Page's Goal
Oct 20, 2009 (2 comments)
Today we’re going to take a look at a technique which can be used to subliminally direct your visitor’s attention towards the goal of your page. It is a technique that’s not only ... Read this article
Designing a new Website #2: Design Drafts
Oct 13, 2009 (2 comments)
(This is part two in a series of posts about designing a new webpage from scratch, before you have any concrete data to guide your design-decisions.) With your priority lists in hand, it’s time to ... Read this article
Designing a new Website #1: Priority Lists
Oct 10, 2009 (2 comments)
(This is part one in a series of posts about designing a new webpage from scratch, before you have any concrete data to guide your design-decisions.) When you’re designing a new page the most... Read this article
How I Increased Newsletter Sign-Up Rate 274%
Oct 04, 2009
One year ago I got quite a big surprise when looking at the statistics of a newly launched website: out of 2,000 visitors, 32% clicked a link leading them to the page they were already on. But why?... Read this article
Conversion Design: the Real Purpose of Web Design
Sep 29, 2009 (12 comments)
What exactly do Toyota, Nike and Apple expect in return when they throw millions at their designers? “Something really pretty; something beautiful” one might say. True, but when we thin... Read this article
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Popular articles
- Design Trend: Interfaces with Less Information
- Poor Copywriting – the UX Problem That Will Never Go Away?
- One Page Checkouts – the Holy Grail of Checkout Usability?
- Form Field Usability: Avoid Multi-Column Layouts
- 19 Ways to Simplify 'Sign Up'
- User Expectations: Create an Illusion of Space
- Readability: the Optimal Line Length
- 3 Examples of Inline Help
- Form Field Usability: Matching User Expectations
- Drop-Down Usability: When You Should (and Shouldn't) Use Them