Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: "Usability" for the Rest of Us!
Comment: "Usability" is one of those Web site design subject areas that make Web site owners and online marketers cringe! No longer - with Steve Krug's help, non-designers are finally armed with a common sense approach to Web site usability.
The BEST thing about Steve Krug's book on Web site usability is his common sense approach to everything from how Web surfers REALLY view a Web page to how to perform usability testing on a really tight budget. And all this down-to-earth advice from a person who has performed hundreds of usability design reviews for some of the largest companies on the Web!
A great read written by someone who's "been there, done that".
Dave Ingalls
Internet Marketing Course
Customer Rating:
Summary: Way cool and easy to read book, yet much up to the point
Comment: I read the book like a very good roman, it's clear, simple to read, easy to understand, and very well illustrated with lots of enlightening examples. A must-read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazingly simple yet deep
Comment: I love the fact that this book practices what it preaches. It is a book about good design and making things simple and it does exactly that with a simple layout and clear narrative. This may seem like a small thing but it most definitely is not. Making things very clear and concise is much more difficult than just writing and rambling. This book was designed to be read in a single airplane ride so it is fairly light weight. But this does not mean that the content is not deep.
As a web developer, the information in this book in invaluable when attempting to see your work though your user's eyes. Do youself a favor and take this book to heart. The chapter on how to do usability tests for cheap is worth more than the price of the book on its own.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Ties it all together
Comment: All in all, while there doesn't seem to be a ton of NEW information for web designers that have been in the field for a few years or more, Steve does a fantastic job of taking all of the bits of knowledge and tying them together in a cohesive, easily understandable structure, shedding new light and insight along the way. That's not to say there is NO new information. Everyone will find something in here that they didn't know before. More importantly, however, are Steve's perspectives into really making what you already know work for you.
The book does a great job of breaking down the web design process in an easy to digest step-by-step process, calling out challenges, obstacles, and no-brainers along the way. I thoroughly enjoyed having lots of what I'd picked up over the years brought into focus and examined through new filters.
The one thing that I wish this book had is a detachable checklist. Or one that you can download and print from his website, http://sensible.com/. Now that the entire process is broken down and defined, it would have been nice to have a quick-reference checklist for practical use a day-to-day operations.
Customer Rating:
Summary: advanced common sense
Comment: At 200 pages, this book is probably the best must-read book on creating usable web sites. Krug introduces all of the main concepts of usability, in what he calls "advanced common sense" language.
There are a lot of difference between web site usability and application usability... mainly because everybody uses web sites, so the audience is highly diverse, and they will leave your site for a better one relatively quickly. Usability has a lot to do with concise writing, intuitive structure, foolproof web forms, and the optimal blend of content and functionality. He covers many important topics including:
* how to write for the web
* the difference between usability testing and focus groups
* the fierce politics of the home page
* navigation structures that work well
* usability testing on a shoestring budget
* how to interpret test results
Even if you don't have the resources for a usability test -- in fact, especially if you don't -- you should get this book and follow his simple rules to make your web site ten times more usable.
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