Customer Rating: 
Summary: Practical and Easy to Follow
Comment: If you are reading this review, probably you already know the importance of usability for Web sites (or at least notice the usability issues). For learning Web usability, the Web usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, is no doubt the most suitable person to be your teacher. This book will not teach you how to do user testing, but will only show you "WHAT" good Web usability is. It is actually a review of the concepts Jakob brings us in his Web site useit.com, but it is more structural and with more examples. This book is not difficult to read, people with any background can get the book's idea easily. If you are thinking buy this book or not, try to visit his Web site - useit.com first, as you can get some of Jakob's ideas there.Another famous Web usability book is Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think - A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability". That is a thin book (Jakob's book: over 400 pages Vs Steve's book: about 200 pages). Therefore, if you don't need to know everything, Steve's book is better. Otherwise, I suggest Jakob's book.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great book for Web Designers
Comment: I found this book very helpful in determining the best way to design web pages. It provided 'real life' examples of things that were done right as well as lessons to be learned by web sites that had done things wrong. The book was very easy to read and very applicable to the business world. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who want to design a website that keeps the user in mind!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Shallow on specifics
Comment: A bookful of screenshots does not research make. Sure, this book is full of common senses suggestions for usability, but it sorely lacks detailed references to establish credibility. A statement like "most people prefer searches" doesn't carry much weight without as much as a footnote to the actual research. This useful payload of this book could have easily been conveyed in 50 pages.While I wouldn't recommend this read, Web newbies might pick up an idea or two. Anyone with any sense of Web design should spend their reading time elsewhere.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Packed with valuable information
Comment: This is a must read book for all concerned. Mostly, the book is well organized: on one page with text explanations, including HTML code hints mostly, and the other side with the example website. Although, if I have one slight argument about books today in general, it's that the writing style should be more "highlight arranged"; To borrow from the book's cover: readers want to quickly access the pertinent information they need. Time-wise, this book would be cost-effective with half the words at the same price, but more useful if organized as an indexed reference; for example, similar to the excellent book "A Writer's Reference", by Diana Hacker. It's not an easy book to master on first read; it covers a lot of ground, so I'll have to re-read. I wouldn't skip this book by any means, but I agree with some reviewers: to get more than just one expert's perspective, different perspectives if possible; For example, the O'Reilly book "Web Design In A Nutshell."
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is a highly effective book with solid information
Comment: In reading over the reviews it is easy to find people who are quite hostile to what Nielsen has to say and it's easy to understand why--he insults and threatens their very approach to web design. Nielsen's message is really quite simple: web sites should be constructed for the end user, not to demonstrate the skills and ego of the designer. Unless you are designing a site that is intended simply to demonstrate the breadth of your abilities, designing is not about fun--it's about taking information and making it as accessible as possible for your end users. It can be fun, but your own enjoyment shouldn't be the purpose.In Designing Web Usability Nielsen does an effective job of demonstrating ways in which you can help your users to move through your site efficiently and accurately. Individual sections may seem seem somewhat self-evident, but taken as a whole these sections add up to an impressive amount of information. Of particular interest are chapters 4: Site Design, and a section in chapter 3 on writing for the web. In the section on site design he discusses issues such as using navigational cues to orient the reader to where they are, where they've been, and where they can go, and different types of organizational schemes. As a technical communicator I found the section on writing for the web particularly relevant. Put simply--most people do not like to read online. You have a second or two to grab their attention and only a bit longer to hold them there if they are intrigued. Relevant information needs to be placed front and center and should be foregrounded through the effective use of headings, bulleted lists, etc. This section does a good job explaining how to do so. None of this is to say that Nielsen is without fault. I do believe that there are times when his rules should be broken. He seems to assume that conveyance of information is the only purpose of the web and, obviously there are many other reasons people surf. Nevertheless, if your site has the purpose of communicating information of some form, this book should be read and absorbed.
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