Some articles on usability

Jacob Mr.Usability Nielsen wrote:Scrolling beats paging because it's easier for users to simply keep going down the page than it is to decide whether or not to click through for the next page of a fragmented article.

Jacob Mr.Usability Nielsen wrote:the fact that users scroll doesn't free you from prioritizing and making sure that anything truly important remains above the fold...users will scroll below the fold only if the information above it makes them believe the rest of the page will be valuable.

Jack Bellis, Author of It's Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome! RSI Theory & Therapy for Computer Professionals wrote:Single-page ("one long page") design has always (!) been the right design for a lot of situations. Slow modems just meant it had to be used very carefully. Since the advent of RealAudio, which I think introduced the concept of "streaming," I've been begging for streaming code and every other form of content. Now that it's here, whether with Ajax, broadband, or any other technology, scrolling in a single view has a lot of benefits, not least of which is printing a whole topic in a single action.

Jacob Mr.Usability Nielsen wrote:Drop-down menus are often more trouble than they are worth and can be confusing because Web designers use them for several different purposes. Also, scrolling menus reduce usability when they prevent users from seeing all their options in a single glance.

Jacob Mr.Usability Nielsen wrote:...designers employ drop-down menus for a variety of different purposes, including

• Command menus, which initiate an action based on the option users select.
• Navigation menus, which take users to a new location.
• Form fill-in, which lets users select an option to enter into a form field.
• Attribute selection, which lets users choose a value from a menu of possible values.

Only the last use conforms to the classic interpretation of the GUI widget used for drop-down menus ...

Jared M. Spool, Founder of User Interface Engineering wrote:It's hard to imagine a form that could be simpler: two fields, two buttons, and one link. Yet, it turns out this form was preventing customers from purchasing products from a major e-commerce site, to the tune of $300,000,000 a year....
The form was simple. The fields were Email Address and Password. The buttons were Login and Register. The link was Forgot Password. It was the login form for the site. ...
(first-time shoppers) did mind registering...As one shopper told us, "I'm not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something."
The designers fixed the problem simply. They took away the Register button. In its place, they put a Continue button with a simple message: "You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout."

Moggin wrote:Excellent articles. Thank you for the links! I recognised the $300m button one

Moggin wrote:Here's one of my J Nielsen favourites
How Users Read on the Web. They don't.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

Xsecrets wrote:wow sooskriszta I'm glad not everyone agrees with your design views...

People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word. 

Xsecrets wrote:... we would all have carpel tunnel in our scroll fingers.

Xsecrets wrote:You must be the one behind the thinking of all the herbal supplement sites. They all want you to wear out your scroll wheel before you can even get a chance to buy anything.

sooskriszta wrote:

A key difference though, is that in my design, the user doesn't NEED to scroll below the fold. All the important stuff - product name, image, rating, "Add to cart button" and description are above the fold

Jacob Nielsen wrote:That's why we do usability studies: because we are not the audience.

sooskriszta wrote: So the question is would you rather click or scroll. Or better still, would you buy when there is a click available for more info or would you buy when more information is available further down. Please, please, please run that AB test. Mine says people buy more when I dont hide reviews and photos behind tabs. Let's see what yours says.

Jacob Nielsen wrote:That's why we do usability studies: because we are not the audience.

Xsecrets wrote:where did you run the test? If you ran it on opencart please tell how

sooskriszta wrote:

Xsecrets wrote:where did you run the test? If you ran it on opencart please tell how

Several different places, software etc, but most recently with OpenCart. It's not hard - you create a product1.tpl without tabs, and provide Google Site Optimizer the URLs to the two. Google automatically directs aprox. half of your users to the test/B template. Check out the link I posted earlier: http://www.google.com/support/websiteop ... swer=61201

Xsecrets wrote:but how did you manage to get the controller to use the product1.tpl half the time and the product.tpl the other half the time.

sooskriszta wrote:3. Create a copy of product.php controller file and rename it product1.php
4. Replace the 3 instances of product.tpl in product1.php with product1.tpl. Also rectify the self-references, i.e. replace any "sreferences to product.php within product1.php to product1.php. This includes renaming the class in line 2 to ControllerProductProduct1
5. Upload these files to respective places.

Naz wrote:Question. Do you put the google code in the controllers or the template files? Also Google say put the code "immediately after the opening <head>". Does it matter or can it be floating at the top or bottom?

sooskriszta wrote:

Xsecrets wrote:but how did you manage to get the controller to use the product1.tpl half the time and the product.tpl the other half the time.

I didn't

That's the beauty of Google Website Optimizer. Google does all the heavy lifting.

For OpenCart installations, I'll try to do a step-by-step:
1. Create a copy of product.tpl and name it product1.tpl
2. In product1.tpl, make the changes you want, e.g. remove tabs.
3. Create a copy of product.php controller file and rename it product1.php
4. Replace the 3 instances of product.tpl in product1.php with product1.tpl. Also rectify the self-references, i.e. replace any "sreferences to product.php within product1.php to product1.php. This includes renaming the class in line 2 to ControllerProductProduct1
5. Upload these files to respective places.
6. Sign up and log into Google Website Optimizer http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer/b/index.html
7. Choose to do AB test.
8. Provide http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?rou ... ct/product as control URL, http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?rou ... t/product1 as test URL and http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?rou ... ut/success as conversion URL.
9. After Google has validated these URLs, it will provide pieces of code to put on top and bottom of product.php, and at bottom of product1.php and success.tpl respectively.
10. Once you've added the code to relevant files, upload these updated files to respective places.
11. That's it! Click start the test, and compare the results after about 100-150 sales have been made.

Enjoy!

P.S. Google's code manages all the redirection. Don't get disappointed if on refreshing a product page you don't see the variation - Google uses cookies to have a consistent experience for individual users while testing...delete cookies and refresh to see the variations