By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher.com

Earlier this year I was pestering Jakob Nielsen--the uber web design guru-- to do a study of weblog usability. Jakob was reluctant at the time because he said there was no money to fund such a study. It takes about $200k to do a full study.

Nevertheless, Jakob did just recently publish: Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes:




This is my absolute favorite:

4. Links Don't Say Where They Go
Many weblog authors seem to think it's cool to write link anchors like: "some people think" or "there's more here and here." Remember one of the basics of the Web: Life is too short to click on an unknown. Tell people where they're going and what they'll find at the other end of the link.

Generally, you should provide predictive information in either the anchor text itself or the immediately surrounding words.

I'm always very pleased when Silicon Valley Watcher is linked by my readers in their posts. I'm even happier when the link is described as coming from Silicon Valley Watcher :-)