Robert Denton - web strategist and designer

Speaking of Usability

Email Newsletter Usability: 127 design guidelines for subscription interfaces, newsletter content and account maintenance based on user research

Nielsen Norman Group Report:
Email Newsletter Usability:
127 design guidelines for subscription interfaces, newsletter content and account maintenance based on user research

Why doesn’t the NNGroup put a date on their content?

I am extremely anxious about the authority, timelinesss, and accuracy of this content. They probably have a report that states your content should have an authored on date. Otherwise, why should I pay attention to this, for all I know the research is out of date.

I understand the desire to sell more 300.00 dollar reports (oh, sorry, 500.00 if you allow a colleague to read it too) but, isn’t the desire also to serve your web site visitor, to instill in them a sense of authority and freshness?

My suggestion to NN/g: Even if your research for the “Email Newsletter Usability” is four years old (of course I’m making this up since I can’t find a published date) then couldn’t you just post the publish date and then talk about other research that’s more current in relation??

You guys are smart but this is a huge usability problem. Imagine if all the books in a library had no publish date associated with them. What would that mean?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005 at 10:41 am and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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