Yeah Shari,

We are on the same page….You would be surprised to know that I was discussing the same thing with few of my juniors - are they seem to be living with the same misconception….

Its all hapening because of all such vague articles on the web…they read..

I’m going to take this bait. A lot of people don’t know this. There have been 4 passings in my family in the last 5 months. It’s been a rough ride for everyone in my family, including me.

Look, everyone talks about this mysterious user experience. And every person on the planet honestly believes he/she knows what the user experience really is. Well, guess what? Do you usability test? Do you actually gather a representative group of users that fit a profile or persona and actually observe them? Are you a facilitar or an observer? People who build their own sites should never be a facilitator when usability testing their own sites.

What I hear are people who say, “tableless designs are better for the user experience because of the faster download time.” Okay prove it. Don’t quote Jakob Nielsen, Jared Spool or any other usability professional. Did you do what I briefly described in the previous paragraph? If you did not, and do not follow this procedure continuously throughout the evolution of your site, then your opinion is not valid. Perceived download time is a more accurate measure of user satisfaction than actual download time.

Yeah, I’m quoting Jared Spool on that previous statement. The difference is that I actually usability test. I don’t quote others and pretend I am a usability professional. I do it.

So no, I do not agree with the previous blog post. I have tested tableless designs and actually found that many of them do not yield as positive results as a combination table/CSS design.

Regarding Web 2.0 sites, it doesn’t matter what your opinion is. I know that sounds harsh; it is only my frustration. You are not selling to you. You are selling to a group of people who do not think the same way you do or do things the same ways you do. Usability is not about what people think. It’s about what they do. So what if someone thinks my site is cool. Do they add to cart, sign up for my newsletter, etc. Do they take the desired calls to action? If not, why don’t they? What people say and what they do are very, very different. And you don’t know what they do until you actually usability test. Web analytics do not provide the data that usability tests do.

Certainly, I am not saying to not use Web analytics or focus groups as they do provide useful data. But they are not usability tests.

SEO professionals and Web developers delude themselves into believing that they understand the elusive user experience. I speak from personal experience. I used to be that person. But now I test and have done so for years. What an eye opener.

Having table less design does help because the page renders fast which will help in improving your user experience which will affect your SE rankings.

I think web2.0 site are good when compared to non 2.0 sites. Making your site interactive is always good. Through this you will get some idea what your users want. I support web2.0

Moreover I dont think crawl rate has any effect on site rankings. I am working on site which is visited by MSN bots everyday but we are not even indexed in MSN.