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Shopping Search UsabilityMore Context For Feature Findersfrom the department of random ideas: No matter where you search for a In-Context Information If you want to see product information in the right place at the right time, look no further than usability-lovin' Epinions. Under resolution on their digital camera feature-finder page, there is a "What is resolution?" link, which leads to a brief description. Also, at the top of the page, they have links to an in-depth buying guide and a practical "wizard" tool. My only quibble is the "What is resolution?" link could include, or link to, information from the buying guide and/or wizard tool, such as how many megapixels you will need for various print sizes. After all, the goal is to give people enough actionable information so they can be comfortable with their buying decision, and you do not accomplish this goal with a dictionary definition. Feature History Graphs Honestly, I don't know if I have seen this before, but the images have been bouncing around in my head for some time. Maybe it can be useful, maybe not. All I am presenting is the possibility that product-feature trends can be useful shopping information. When I say product-feature trends, we could simply track the number of products with each feature over time, but I think it would be more interesting to track changes in user drill-down behavior. Maybe both could be useful, plus the relationship between availability and popularity. We have cool tools for prices (see: NexTag), why no cool tools for features? This first example is probably only good for curiousity...
...but what about features that have competing industry standards? In these cases, pick the wrong format, and bad things happen. In some cases, you will have less cross-device compatibility, and in most cases, you will have less "bang for the buck" over time. In the graph below, all things being equal, which memory format would you choose?
The above examples are for the best-served product category on the Web, digital cameras, but this type of supplemental information could be used for other areas. How about vacations? Let's say you have a limited budget and unlimited flexibility. What if you could look up, by city, the average daily price of airfare and hotels for the last year? Now what if you could overlay that graph with information about temperature and precipitation? Okay, I'd better stop, I'm getting silly. Or am I?... :-) Most-Popular Features Graphs are great, but there are possibilities with text, too.
Amazon.com taps the "collective wisdom" of its shoppers at the item level. Who is to say a comparison shopping site could not do the same thing for the most popular features? Or, in addition to including the number of items in parentheses for each feature-option link, perhaps there is a way to also include a popularity percentage next to all features? Summary Like I say, maybe this could be useful, maybe not. All I know is we have a lot of shopping engines providing roughly the same functionality, maybe it is time for some experimentation.
More Context For Feature Finders
FareChase Still Not Supporting FirefoxFireFox 1.0 vs. FareChase beta "Browser Not Supported To be fair, the problem likely existed before Yahoo bought FareChase. Still, Yahoo has a habit of breaking stuff for "other" browsers, so I'm not optimistic about browser compatibility being a top priority. Yo, Yahoo: * Your beloved Internet Explorer is owned by Microsoft, a company that is ditching your search results in favor of their own search engine. For this and other reasons, you might want to consider them a competitor, and start getting cozy with their competitors. * Another funny thing about this Internet Explorer. After installing the SideStep toolbar, it open a sidebar whenever I do a search at FareChase. Surely, SideStep is a competitor, with their seven million downloads? Hint: their toolbar is only a threat on IE. Is FareChase doing anything special on Explorer that any of the other travel search engines have not been able to do on Firefox? To the untrained eye, it looks like all they are doing is throwing away market share in an ultra-competitive market. added: I just received an email from Yahoo, which included this clarification: "Currently Yahoo! FareChase hotel and car search supports Windows Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher." (emphasis mine) Flights work with Firefox. I should have caught the last sentence of the FareChase FAQ.
FareChase Still Not Supporting Firefox
Link Usability in Shopping SearchJakob Nielsen has a throught-provoking article on Reviving Advanced Hypertext. Under the section about Integrated Search and Browsing, he talks about the importance of annotating each navigation label with the number of search hits in the area it points to. For example, if a user was searching at Henry Ford's Old-Time Car Site, and they could not decide between black and blue, but were cetain about not wanting orange or yellow, these link annotations would be useful: Black (1000) ...because the color black could allow for considerably more feature refinement. So, which shopping engines are giving their users the gift of foresight, and which ones are making them rely on hindsight? Link Annotation at Shopping Search Engines:
Not too shabby. Are shopping search engines among the more usable sites on the Web?
Link Usability in Shopping Search
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