Minor changes in response to survey
Posted by Huw,
I'm working my way through your comments and I'll post a long response in the next few days. However I've made a few tweaks as a result of feedback already:
- The big ugly banner that appears when you view the site on a mobile device has been removed.
- There were a lot of comments about the search auto-complete and having to press 'Go' once you'd selected something from the list. I've changed the behaviour so you now don't need to. However I'm sure I disabled that feature a while ago due to some unwanted side-effect but it appears to work OK so I'll leave it on for now. Let me know if it works for you.
- Some of you have already noticed the little flag in the top corner that lets you 'pretend' to be in a different country so you can see prices and shopping links for countries other than your own. This was a previously hidden feature but as it was requested in the survey, I thought I'd make it available to everyone.
- Finally, another change you'll notice that has tidied up the home page a bit is the replacement of the ads at the side with text links. I read this article at the weekend that says "Web users tend to ignore everything that looks like advertisement and what is interesting, they’re pretty good at it. Although advertisement is noticed, it is almost always ignored". So given that nobody looks at them, and they were cluttering up the page a bit, they are now gone.
More changes to come, so stay tuned...
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17 comments on this article
I definitely like the 'pretend country' feature! I am an expat (kid) in a third world country, and I always get prices etc in dollars, though I'd prefer them in pounds. Unfortunately, it means I now have the e-bay bar...Could that be made a setting you can turn on/off, like the shopping alerts?
Glad you like it.
The eBay bar will be here until Jan 1st 2012 then will disappear for good (well, until the next run up to Christmas, anyway...)
Aaand here's the Italian translation for the Bargain Watch link:
Vedi cosa c'e' di scontato su Amazon.it
There! :P
I don't ignore them, but the ad blocker that won't uninstall (:() on my PC doesn't like them, and doesn't display them, so this is much better - thanks Huw.
^^ Thanks but I'm not going to provide translations given that I think it's fair to assume that most Italians visiting can read English well enough to translate that bit themselves.
Thanks for the link to the source material, Huw - that banner blindness research is fascinating !
@Huw: Alright... :P
This site just gets better and better.
@DrD, if you search for Smashing Magazine in the Apple book store on your iPad you can download it, and other interesting web-design related articles for free.
^^It does. Can't wait to see the next set of mods!
I wouldnt trust these rules too much, some of them are nonsense (like the 3 click rule)
We do lots of work in banner blindness etc, as well as eyetracking including one that combines with a brainwave reader, and yes it is true that banner blindness is a real phenomenon, although not the whole story ... like many design 'rules' it all depends on the context ... what constitutes a 'banner' is variable, and the degree of 'blindness', or whether there is any at all, depends on user goals and stage in their journey. Beware of usability 'rules'.
Is there a way for users to remove/hide "Brickset: the top online resource for LEGO collectors worldwide." at the top of the mainpage or is that just always going to be there?
^ That will always be there unless I hear a good reason to remove it. Its purpose is to tell someone that's just stumbled on the site what the site is so they can ascertain whether it's likely to be of interest to them.
Having said that once you've logged in it's a bit superfluous so I guess it could be hidden then.
^Huw, could you add set 11998, which is the set for Pick A Brick, please?
Huw, thanks for the updates to the site. I appreciate your effort.
Why isn't the Ebay bar displaying items only on my wanted list anymore?
Thanks for all you do.