Design vs Art Blog

Explaining something through graphics is a great thing that could help users, but you can improve that even more if you make that interactive. We all learn in an interactive way through life, so why don’t we do that on the web? Keep in mind that a clear explanation could improve the overall website usability and could persuade users to use [and buy] your services.

Let me play, Google. I was playing with the AdWords configuration and think that the Google advertisement configuration website could be a little bit improved. I’m new there but still I think the whole interface is a little bit messy. But there is one [more] thing that Google is making in a great way, they are using an interactive graphic to teach users about the AdWords settings. You might think that this is obvious, but unfortunately not everybody is using this kind of simplicity to explain things. Have a closer look:

As the user selects between Lower Budget and Higher Budget the primary and the secondary effects change, in this case the number of impressions and the clicks. The graphic also makes clear that the ad position does not change.

Same as before, the user plays between Lower and Higher CPC to see what the primary and secondary effects are.

This interactive graphic tries to explain something a little bit complicated, the use of keywords, but it is very successful giving clear examples.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Giving users an easy way to see and change their privacy policy gives them a better sense of security and at the end they might finish up giving you more information if you take the time to design a good privacy page. Keep in mind that some users don’t want to share any kind of information with websites but, fortunately, thats not the typical user profile. 

"give them the chance to control all that data all the time…"

Most users will accept to give you some information, specially if you give them the chance to control all that data all the time. That’s why it’s important to give users an easy access to the privacy settings, make that link highly visible, like Facebook does.

Facebook has also a good privacy settings page design. They grouped the settings in different categories. Once inside the category the user has great amount of options. My first impression was that this was too much, but if the website gives the option to deactivate single features there are more possibilities for the others to remain active.

Advanced options…

Popularity: 21% [?]