With just a shade under 50 submissions for the first round of the Usability Makeover Series, I had a hard time with the selection process. I ended up selecting individual pages for each house is the fact that there is no price “above the fold”. I realize the rates vary by week, but we should find some way to put a price in there. Either the average price or a price chart for the next 3 weeks, or whatever. My concern is that someone who comes in from Google directly to this page sees only this with out scrolling down:
According to Jakob Nielson these can have an inverse usability effect. Twiddy may want to consider rethinking that or taking that out all together and just letting the user scroll down.
Another thing I would like to see here is maybe 5 line chart just below the main picture of “vital statistics”. Price, square footage, number of beds, number of bedrooms, and distance from the beach, or something of that nature would be great. Remember people don’t like to read. Give them something that they can scan to see if the house is right for them, then they can read the details and the full amenities chart.
ConclusionI could go on for at least 10 to 20 pages, but I don’t want to bore anybody. As you can see, there isn’t really anything revolutionary here. Most of usability is picking apart the smallest details that when aggregated account for a lot of loss in conversion rate. Will fixing the things I’ve mentioned in this article make their sales go through the roof? Probably not, in fact I may have totally missed the mark, but the bigger idea here is that usability isn’t a destination it’s a journey. If you’re not consistently moving ahead on your site testing new layouts, new placements, new buttons, different price charts, adding new features, and figuring out how to try to stay ahead of the competition then you’re basically moving backwards.
If anyone else has any constructive criticism for Comments
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