I just finished a book that Mark, our eCommerce expert, loaned to me a while. The book, entitled Prioritizing Web Usability, by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger was a great read. I would call it a must-read who anyone who owns a website, whether you do the design work yourself or not. It covers everything from colors, to information architecture, to user-interface components, to how you should write your copy. What’s more, this is not just the opinions of some certain web designers, but rather based on extensive (Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen group) research and user testing.

I think the very first passage presented in the book will stand sufficient proxy for the feel of the whole book. So I will share it with you here.

Ten years ago, the Web was exciting to people. Today it’s routine. It’s a tool. If it’s convenient, they will use it; if not, they won’t. With ten times as many sites and probably a hundred times as many pages on the Web, users are getting less tolerant of difficult sites, so every design flaw means lost business. Usability has become more important than ever.

PS. This book is several years old, so check for it at your local library.