You'll do fine so long as you remember that things can logically fit in many categories. My new video game belongs in BOTH electronics and toys. If you try to pidgin hole everything into one group, when the case can be made for it to be in more than one. Some people won't find it.
This is, incidentally, my biggest pet peeve with most music software. The Mars Volta is Metal AND Jazz! Static-x is Metal, Techno, AND Trance! Sites tend to be better about it. But my iPod knows not what multiple genres are. Don't be my iPod. That is the single biggest mistake you can make, next to only providing a search bar. Which you shouldn't do. Search is great... if the user knows what they want. However, you can remove most 'search-for-something-specific' users with a good search system. Try to correct spelling if you can. List off common misspellings at the very least. (I wonder if eyeQ wishes they hadn't named itself that?) What should be left are users that are poking about looking for things they might like, or that someone they know might like. Which means, like amazon, the more ways you can give them to find related or unrelated items the better. Think more about WHAT amazon lets you see and less about HOW they let you see it. If you can give them items that others who bought what they are looking at bought somewhere, that is big. But you most likely can't. Next best thing is to do some of that by hand, and do some of it completely at random, and some based on what the user has already been through. If they are looking at video games, show them accessories for the system they are looking at. Show them other games from the same genre. Show them something completely not related. Or so meta-related that it takes them aback. That last one is hard to do. If the game is "Lego Indiana Jones" if the links to items somewhere on the page look something like this, you win: - An Indiana Jones lego set - Lego Starwars the game for the same system - A second controller for the system - Indiana Jones DVD box set - A rubber Snake - A WWII shooter for the same system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=42786 ________________________________________________________________ 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
