Anyone know of any usability, design, or engagement studies dealing with sites that have two sets of users? Here's the example: a new web site that functions as a catalog for other companies. The Customer is coming to look for products in general, and may never have heard of (or care about) the Vendor.
The site makes its money solely from monthly fees from the Vendors. So: 1) The site needs to engage and satisfy Customers, using mental models they are familiar with 2) The site needs to engage and satisfy Vendors, using mental models they are familiar with 3) The Vendors pay the bills My position is to make the site's frontend entirely for the Customer's goal - finding the right product and buying it. That means downplaying the Vendors somewhat, or at least avoiding the kinds of features that might attract a Vendor (like big logos) but hinder a Customer (who wants small logos). The Vendor's interface on the backend, however, can have more of a direct appeal, as can their "storefront". My problem is that my client believes the site should cater to the Vendor, since they're the one paying the bills. Obviously the Customer still has to make the sale, or the Vendor will pull out, but they aren't as important. I'll give a concrete example I'm facing. If you search for a product, let's say a shirt, and get 100 results, then I believe those results should appear in a predictable manner and default to the same order every time. That would help the customer if they repeat a search because they have an expectation of what's there, and they know where to look for something within that list. My client, however, wants to use a complex-ish formula that maintains "fairness" to the Vendors. That means whatever item appeared first in the last search now appears last in this one. It doesn't matter what the other search was for. Each product would receive a time stamp that showed it's most recent appearance, and the next time the product is in a search the one with the oldest time stamp appears first. Then the Customer can choose a new sort order based on name, price, etc. It's not a terrible idea (though technically I'm concerned since it has to write to the MySQL database for every item in every search), but it could be very frustrating to a customer who gets different results from the same search (or the appearance of it, anyway). So, any brainstorms, research, wisdom, or bologna out there to help me sort this out? I need to either handle the conflict with design or convince the client to focus on the Customer. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
