Has anyone done any work studying the effectiveness of toolbars / "butcons" in web applications? Specifically I'm interested to know how intermediate / advanced tools such as those impact customer conversion rates.
Most web 2.0 apps seem to be a mixture of tabs / buttons, with very little use of toolbars or menus. The exception being Google Docs / Gmail, which are really just translations of widely adopted existing programs - and those are free apps. The majority of freemium web apps I've encountered seem to lean towards the novice user in an attempt to gain customers over catering to the experienced user. This leads to huge buttons with lots of text, and downplays the use of icons for accomplishing tasks. Toolbars are of course designed with the intermediate user in mind - which could be a challenge for converting new customers with a freemium web site model with subscription plans. Ran a search on the archives and couldn't come up with anything. Any pointers would be great... ________________________________________________________________ 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
