Designing easy-to-use websites : a hands-on approach to structuring successful websites / Vanessa Donnelly.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This text provides practical guidelines on how to design usable e-business Websites; Websites that not only contain up-to-date, effective information that is easy to find, but sites that actually make it easy for users to do all the tasks that they have come to the site to achieve. The emphasis now for e-business Websites is to improve customer satisfaction and to make the user experience of the site simple, intuitive and efficient. Companies who invest in designing solutions that make life easy for their users are far more likely to achieve customer retention - the key to the success or failure of any business on the Web.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. xiii)
• My introduction to web usability (p. xiii)
• The importance of a structured approach (p. xiv)
• Trying to put it into practice (p. xv)
• Theory, experience and avoiding analysis paralysis (p. xviii)
• About this book (p. xix)
• Information modelling and the use of UML (p. xx)
• Acknowledgements (p. xxi)
• 1 Background and justification for a structured web development process (p. 1)
• 1 Why ease of use should be important to company websites (p. 3)
• Measuring the usability of a site (p. 4)
• Time for a design shift (p. 6)
• Understanding how websites have evolved (p. 7)
• Summary (p. 13)
• 2 Problems with HTML authored sites (p. 14)
• The importance of the website over the web page (p. 14)
• The importance of managing a website (p. 19)
• Content life cycle (p. 20)
• Content creation (p. 21)
• Content publication (p. 23)
• Content maintenance (p. 24)
• Implications of site redesign (p. 25)
• 3 The need for a process (p. 28)
• Achieving a quality website (p. 28)
• Learning from the software development process (p. 30)
• Learning from the publication process (p. 34)
• Summary (p. 39)
• 2 Website development overview and analysis techniques (p. 41)
• 4 Website development overview (p. 43)
• The main stages to consider (p. 43)
• The importance of the analysis phase (p. 47)
• Summary (p. 50)
• 5 Business analysis (p. 51)
• Information defined as part of a business analysis (p. 51)
• Business requirements (p. 59)
• Site goals (p. 61)
• 6 User analysis (p. 63)
• The purpose of a user analysis (p. 63)
• What is a user analysis? (p. 65)
• Usability objectives (p. 69)
• Involving users (p. 73)
• Summary (p. 80)
• 7 Critical design features for common web tasks (p. 82)
• Waiting (p. 83)
• Browsing (p. 86)
• Hunting (p. 88)
• Reading (p. 92)
• Navigating through a site (p. 94)
• Finding sites and printing web pages (p. 98)
• Summary (p. 101)
• 8 Content design considerations (p. 103)
• Classification (p. 103)
• Summary (p. 115)
• View templates (p. 116)
• Summary (p. 120)
• Summary views (p. 120)
• Combination views (p. 125)
• Summary (p. 132)
• 9 Content analysis (p. 133)
• Content types (p. 133)
• Content properties (p. 138)
• Content relationships (p. 142)
• Content classification (p. 151)
• Content measurements (p. 156)
• Summary (p. 159)
• 10 Defining workflows (p. 161)
• Analyzing the existing environment (p. 162)
• Defining new workflows for content management (p. 168)
• Summary (p. 173)
• 3 Analyzing the requirements of the different contributors to the site (p. 175)
• 11 Website teams overview (p. 177)
• Team roles (p. 178)
• Summary (p. 183)
• 12 Analyzing the requirements of the business analyst (p. 185)
• Defining business criteria (p. 185)
• Measuring business success (p. 194)
• 13 Analyzing the requirements of the human factors engineer (p. 206)
• Defining usability criteria (p. 206)
• Defining user roles (p. 211)
• Defining user tasks (p. 215)
• Measuring site usability (p. 220)
• 14 Analyzing the requirements of the information architect (p. 227)
• Defining different content types (p. 227)
• Defining an information classification system (p. 231)
• Defining search requirements (p. 238)
• Defining site structure (p. 243)
• Reviewing content and content classifications (p. 248)
• Measuring the success of the classification and navigation structure (p. 249)
• 15 Analyzing the requirements of the content manager (p. 252)
• System access (p. 252)
• Defining workflows (p. 260)
• Setting up a proposal workflow (p. 269)
• Arranging permissions for content use (p. 274)
• Setting up a content review workflow (p. 282)
• Setting up a change request workflow (p. 287)
• Setting up a change review workflow (p. 293)
• Setting up processes to remove content from the site (p. 295)
• Managing third party content (p. 300)
• Managing resources (p. 305)
• Tracking progress (p. 311)
• Measuring the quality of the site (p. 316)
• 16 Analyzing the requirements of the visual designer (p. 318)
• View templates (p. 318)
• Visual styles (p. 326)
• Asset library (p. 330)
• 17 Analyzing the requirements of the content creator (p. 335)
• Creating content types (p. 335)
• Classifying content and building content relationships (p. 341)
• Maintaining content items (p. 348)
• Sample forms to create different content types (p. 352)
• 4 Translating requirements into information models (p. 359)
• 18 Information modelling (p. 361)
• Bridging the gap between analysis and design (p. 361)
• Defining an information model (p. 364)
• 19 Common information models (p. 368)
• Common model overview (p. 368)
• Content management system (p. 372)
• Content item (p. 375)
• Content types (p. 384)
• Task flows (p. 397)
• Workflow types (p. 403)
• Site and views (p. 410)
• Classification (p. 417)
• People and roles (p. 419)
• 20 Content management overview (p. 425)
• Core services (p. 426)
• Summary (p. 429)
• Bibliography (p. 431)
• References (p. 433)
• Appendix A IBM Global Services (p. 437)
• Appendix B Overview of the UML notation used within this book (p. 439)
• Appendix C Websphere Advanced CD Bundle (p. 443)
• Index (p. 445)

Author notes provided by Syndetics