Hi Allison, RE: Overall Comparison Considerations The comparison system has to work in the specific ecommerce environment and it's constraints. So, you'll want to consider: - how does site performance change as the number of items increases? - how many facets are you displaying in the comparison? And, what are the display options? - will it result in a static matrix? Or, will it provide further interaction, say, sorting by a facet? - can the selection of items span several pages - I.e., you can select items while paginating through 5 search result/gallery pages? You'll want to 'carry over' some reminder of what's been selected so far. - in the space provided for the matrix, there is an information design challenge for displaying diverse values. For instance, Consumer Reports has their grading system constant across all product types. Or, Edmunds.com accommodates some values that are numeric, some yes/no, some paragraph-length. - Does the matrix include all product attributes? If not, say so and let people view details. - do they have to make detailed selections before comparing (Edmunds)? Or, can they select all from a gallery page (Best Buy)?
My ecommerce experience has been that there is a performance threshold to weigh against maximizing the number of items. That was typically the independent variable in how many items could be compared. (I've noticed that 4 is a common number to compare, but it's not as if those sites tell us why they chose 4.) Also, assuming people are on a path-to-purchase, what are the next steps and how obvious are they? Edmunds let's you add and remove cars to continue the comparison ad nauseam, but they're not selling. - Can they print/export the results? - can they go back to the original category/results? - can they add-to-cart/purchase from there? - Can they view more details on all/one item(s)? Finally, while most comparison selectors are on gallery pages, some product pages offer related items for comparison from there. This preselects items, but it accommodates scenarios where people land on a product page from a referrer or search engine deep link. Hope this helps. -Jay On Tue, 8 Sep 2009 10:32:43, alison austin <amausti...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > What's the general view: is it best to limit the number of items you > can add using compare functionality or better to allow an unlimited > number? > > And, if allowing large numbers of items to be added, is pagination or > horizontal scolling preferable? > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- Sent from my mobile device ------------------------------------------------------------ Jay A. Morgan Director, UX at Gage twitter.com/jayamorgan linkedin.com/in/jayamorgan ------------------------------------------------------------ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
