Design vs Art Blog

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.

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.

Popularity: 12% [?]

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

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.

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.

Popularity: 12% [?]