25 Incredibly Useful Usability & Standards Checklists

Is your Web site primed for every possible viewer? How would you know if it was? The greatest thing about a usable web site that conforms to current web standards is that anyone and everyone is able to use it.

Ensuring your site is easily usable by your key demographic will ensure that everyone gets where they need to be, and sees what they need to see on your site, without unnecessary effort or excessive clicks.  Conforming to current web standards ensures that irrelevant of disability or user restrictions (running IE6 counts as both!) means that no ones left out; this is particularly important on sites that appeal to a completely open demographic, a local government website for example.

The following list of 'cheat sheets' and checklists have been published fairly recently; however, some older usability checklists are still as valuable as when they were created so have also bee included.

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website
Use this Smashing Magazine list to double-check your site’s usability before you launch.

15 Valuable Usability PDFs You Never Heard Of
This list of usability papers in PDF format will put you well ahead.

25-point Website Usability Checklist
A concise list of checkpoints to make sure your site is as usable as possible.

Checklist for Usability Forms
This checklist is for HTML forms along with links to a few articles that are also very helpful.

Everyday Usability - 14-Point Checklist for Success
Kimberly Krause Berg from Cre8pc.com is convinced that a “tweak a day convinces visitors to stay.” Learn more from this short checklist.

General Usability Checklist
This is a true checklist that insures you don't miss a trick.

How to Conduct Usability Evaluations for Accessibility
The Nielsen Norman Group offers these guidelines for testing Web sites and Intranets for users who use assistive technology.

How to Improve Web Site Usability
This former SEO expert provides articles, checklists and a “bonanza of resources” for usability.

Contents of Measuring the Usability Index of Your Web Site
Benjamin Keevil presented this information at the annual Special Interest Group on Systems Documentation (SIGDOC) conference in 1998.

Practical Usability Testing
This article explains how to conduct testing, what to test and how to analyze the results.

Quick Usability Checklist
A short list that addresses the most common usability problems.

Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist
Follow these guidelines, and you’ll be off to a good start in developing usable forms.

Test your Website: A 57-Point Checklist for Maximum Usability
You can go quickly through this checklist to make sure your design is up to snuff.

The Blog Usability Checklist
If you think your blog is usable, you might check it against this 19-point checklist first.

The Essential Website Usability Checklist
This is a 13-point usability checklist designed for Webmasters from DailyBits.

Top 10 Web application usability guidelines & checklist
An easy-to-follow set of guidelines and a checklist for Web site usability.

Usability
456 Berea St. offers a series of articles that list accessibility guidelines in detail.

Usability Checklist Detail
Richard Waller, designer, created this outline for his own use and offers it to other designers.

Usability Guidelines
MIT developed these guidelines, which include most factors to consider during a usability evaluation of a web site.

Usability resources
A plethora of information, resources, tools and techniques to conduct usability testing and reviews.

Usability Toolkit
This is a collection of forms, checklists and other useful documents for conducting usability tests and user interviews.

User Testing Techniques
This page includes information on how to conduct user-based testing along with a skeletal checklist.

Web Site Usability Checklist
This usability checklist highlights five important components of a usable Web site.

Website Usability Checklist
This list was put together recently for a shipping company that was expecting PPC traffic.

Website Usability Checklist
This is a different checklist than the one immediately above. This list attacks usability in all stages of Web development.

This article was provided by Designer City, USA; edited by Nathan Hornby.