Category Archives: Online Retailers

Position Of Search Box Issue

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Being consistent with the search box position is going to help your users when looking for the products you sell online. Many could say that the right position for the search box is the upper right corner. Maybe Yes.

But setting your own search box position is a practical web design option. Keep in mind that you should place the search box in the same place across your whole website.

Check, for example, Foodnetwork.com, a website about cooking. It doesn’t matter where your are, there is only one search box, always in the same place.

Foodnetwork 20071227

On the other side, an example of poor usability, could be found at Colorware.com. At the beginning the search box is in the right position, after the user makes a search another search box appears in the middle of the screen. This is confusing for some users, many click once again the search button but this time in the new search box.

Colorware 20071227

Pop-ups Are Bad For Usability, Example

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Everybody hates pop-ups. This time I have a bad usability example of Amazon.com, in contrary to Tesco yesterday’s article about how to avoid pop-ups to show product pictures to users.

When you click on the product picture on the product description page, Amazon splashes a pop-up window with a bigger picture.

Amazon 20071213

Why this is bad? Amazon’s target is everybody, they are a super store, so it could be that many of it’s users don’t know much about computers. One example I can imagine is that many users have pop-up blockers but they don’t know they have it, so they they will never see the pictures.

That means that many users will not get all the information they need to decide.

Sometimes you have to use pop-ups, but try to avoid them if you can. On yesterday’s article you can see how this could have been avoided by Amazon.

How to Place Product Pictures Without Pop-Ups

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Tesco, the British retailer, developed a nice solution to show users product pictures avoiding the use of pop-up windows.

Tesco Homepage Screenshot 20071212

Pop-up windows are a big usability issue, they confuse users and they negatively affects impaired people. Think that some people just don’t notice the pop-up windows, some close them straight away and some don’t know how to close them.

Tesco placed a “View more images” link on the product description, when clicked, the user is taken to the pictures page.

Tesco Product Description 20071212

Then, in the pictures page they placed a very visible “Back to product” link. I think this solution is a very good one and help users easily navigate pictures. This is a nice usability pattern to keep in mind.

Product Pictures 20071212