[thelist] Nielsen usability reports

[Maisha Walker]

Hello list!

I am wondering if anyone has any experience/feedback to offer about the
Nielsen Norman group reports.

I'm specifically looking at these two reports:

E-commerce User Experience $45
207 Guidelines for E-commerce Sites
221 color screenshots of designs that worked particularly well or that
caused problems for shoppers.
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/ecommerce/


Usability ROI $122
- 42 case studies of design improvements in redesigning websites: the
measured
- 75 screenshots of before/after versions of websites with the associated
metrics showing the impact of each design change on usage.
- Mathematical formula that takes the size of a design project and computes
the recommended usability effort according to current best practices.
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/roi/


For anyone who has seen either of these reports, I'm specifically wondering:
1. what were your expectations?
2. did the report meet your expectations
3. were there any unexpected pearls of wisdom?
4. there are no full dates on the report, did the suggestions seem timely or
at all outdated?


I know that Nielsen is considered the usability guru, but it's so hard to
know exaclty what you're getting when you buy a report you can thumb
through.  I don't really doubt that the information is valuable, just
whether it's the right investment of resources at this time.

Oddly enough, the sample pages don't really help because they're too small
to read!!