January 8th, 2009, 10 Comments »
I’ve been meaning to mention a recent web design trend: the side-mounted feedback link. I think I first spotted the link on BrightKit’s site:
Now that I dig into the links, I see that they’re all powered by and link to two customer services websites: Get Satisfaction and User Voice.
The link is ‘affixed’ to the right or left edge of the browser window and usually rendered in a contrasting colour. It floats above the page–that is, it doesn’t move when you scroll the page up or down.
This lends the link considerable prominence, and I’m interested to see if this eagerness for customer feedback spreads beyond sites using Get Satisfaction and User Voice. I’m also interested to observe whether there’s any consensus on the placement of the link–right or left side? How high in the browser pane?
I’ve collected a little list of sites with side-mounted feedback links on Magnolia. I’m up to eight at the moment. Here they are:
Thus far, there isn’t much consensus. Obviously the high on the left side is going to get more attention than low down on the right, but there’s no standard thus far.
Improved User Experience?
I’m no user experience expert, so I’m interested in opinions of this little innovation. I’m encouraged by this apparent trend toward a more prominent call for interaction.
Of course, the feedback link is analogous to the company’s phone number. It’s how a company responds to the feedback that makes all the difference. If a company representative never replies to your concerns, it doesn’t matter how big or visible your feedback link is.
I’d also be curious about other sites that have added the side-mounted feedback link. Write a comment if you know of any.
UPDATE: I just noticed that the Book Cover Archive has a similar floating link on the left side. It’s not flush with the browser edge, though, and is a link to the site’s home page as opposed to a feedback form.
10 Comments »
June 6th, 2008, 19 Comments »
If you’re a regular Flickr user with Creative Commons-licensed photos, you’ve probably received a request from NowPublic to use one of your photos. I think this is a great application of the crowd-sourcing model, and they’ve got it 90% correct. I sent a feature request to NowPublic on the subject, and thought I’d share it here:
I’ve received a couple of recent requests to integrate Flickr photos into news stories. I’m happy to receive and approve them. However, your current setup obliges me to create a NowPublic account and subsequently log in every time I want to approve a photo (I’m not comfortable uniformly approving all future requests. That’s a pain point I could do without.
Philosophically, I think the question is ‘who’s doing whom a favour?’ The login implies that NP is doing me a favour by publishing my photo. I feel the opposite, that I’m doing NP a favour by permitting you to use my photo. If we work from my assumption, then it behooves NP to make the act of approval as effortless as possible.
Do you think I got this right? Or am I just whinging, and should be grateful for being asked to share my photos? And should that be ‘whom’ or ‘who’? I never committed the associated grammar rule to memory.
I’ve recognized that, personally, I feel quite differently about my photos on Flickr than I do about, say, this blog. While I strive to improve my work on this site, I feel much more ambivalent about my Flickr photos.
Flickr is really just a handy place to put and reference my photos. While I used to obsess about the visitor stats for this site, I almost never check the number of views that my photos have. It’s strictly a question of personal taste, but it’s probably that apathy that’s motivating this feature request.
19 Comments »
March 27th, 2008, 11 Comments »
Two weeks ago I stayed at the Sheraton Wall Centre for a few days. I made liberal use of their Internet access (priced at about CAN $12 a day, which is a deal at a four-star hotel). As usual, to sign up for their service, you had to complete an online form that popped up when you opened your browser. Here’s what it looked like (as always, click for a larger version):
Hilariously, the bottom half of the form is labeled “Ignore the Following Fields and Click Submit”. Then there are three fields, each labeled ‘Ignore This Field’.
Obviously this is a UI disaster. I’m sure there’s some peculiar explanation why the developer could edit field labels but not actually the form itself, but that’s not really satisfactory, is it?
There are actually two separate design disasters here. The less obvious one is the use of the software design term ‘field’. I don’t think the average hotel internet user understands that those blank areas are called ‘fields’. Most people just call them ‘boxes’.
11 Comments »
February 5th, 2008, 18 Comments »
We’re looking for rental accommodation for the first time in nine years. I was really hoping that, in the interim, things in rental property search had improved. They have, but not as much as I’d hoped. Consider our options in Victoria:
- Craigslist - Everybody loves it, but I think the interface sucks. I can’t filter by location. Plus, the quality of the ads is seriously mixed. I have to wade through a lot of noise for a little signal.
- Househunting.ca - I gather this is Canada.com’s housing portal. It’s actually really good. It presents results on a map, and you can sort on price, number of bedrooms and so forth. And, wonder of wonder, it looks like I can subscribe to an RSS feed for new results on my search. It’s lame, kludgy RSS, but better than nothing.
- Random property managers’ sites - These are poorly designed, and have laughable search. Check out these results–they’re clearly designed for the property manager, not the renter. The renter cares about price, not the name of the building.
The essential problem is that, unlike MLS.ca, there isn’t a one-stop rental site that lists every available apartment. I ought to be able to specify my requirements on such a site, and get notified when there are apartments which meet my criteria.
Instead there are a bunch of silos, and only one of them will let me know when there’s new apartments in the inventory.
Two other observations: it’s shocking that so few of the online listings have photos. Even more shocking is the dearth of email addresses for contacting people in the classifieds. Wouldn’t they prefer to receive and manage inquiries via email instead of with a barrage of phone calls?
What We’re Looking For, and a $150 Bounty
For the record, we’re looking for a furnished, two-bedroom apartment within walking distance of downtown for less than CAN $1800, to rent as of March 15 or April 1. We want to live there for one to two years. I’ve rendered our ideal location in the magic of Google Maps:
View Larger Map
Unless it’s exceptional, we don’t want to live in a suite in a house. I like the anonymity of apartments. We might consider renting an entire house, though that seems unlikely in this price range. Nice to haves include:
- Close proximity to a grocery store.
- We’d prefer not to be on the ground floor.
- Hardwood floors.
- A view.
I’m not relishing the thought of searching and checking out a bunch of apartments in rental-starved Victoria. So if anybody finds us the apartment which we eventually rent, I’ll pay you CAN $150.
18 Comments »
November 28th, 2007, 7 Comments »
Anybody who spends any time with web analytics knows this fact, but I thought I’d highlight a real world example. Three years ago I wrote about a sort of money-tracking website (I’m reluctant to name it here, for fear of Heisenberging the search results further). I’m referring here to the Canadian site–not the American one shown above.
Three years later, there are 181 comments on that post, mostly from people providing the details–their location, the bill’s serial number–of a particular bill. Lately the reports have been coming in at a rate of nearly one per day.
Why’s that? Because if you search for the money tracking website, my blog post is the first result. It’s kind of weird, like the website doesn’t really exist in Google at all.
Clearly the folks visiting my site aren’t entering the URL on their money into the address bar–they’re searching in Google. It seems peculiar to web veterans, but it’s really not. They’re trying to find something, after all. And where do you go to find something? A search engine. They just don’t seem to conceive that the www address means that they’ve already found it.
Hmm…today’s posts have been particularly navel-gazing. I’ll do better tomorrow.
7 Comments »
July 18th, 2007, 7 Comments »
I’m running our little Bar Camp Malta survey on Zoomerang. This is the first time I’ve used that service. The setup was a little clunky, but the price–free like the wind and the sea–was right.
Every time I log in to Zoomerang, to tweak the survey or check the results, I’m presented with this message:
There are so many things wrong with that error message. First, it shouldn’t exist at all. How come every other Web app I use can either auto-magically save my work, or prevent me from logging out without saving?
Second, the language is incredibly waffly. “It does not appear” that I logged out? This implies that the developers can’t really tell for sure if I logged out or not. And then the real problem–I “could” have lost changes? Even if I don’t, surely Zoomerang ought to know whether I lost changes.
Finally, I’m given no recourse but to not log in (’Cancel’) or proceed in shame (’Ok’). They don’t even bother to say “to avoid losing your work in the future, be sure to log out”.
It’s classic old-school UI design thinking. Instead of building better software, they just uselessly berate the user.
7 Comments »
June 7th, 2007, 7 Comments »
Because I’m a bit slow on these things, I just learned (or possibly just remembered) that Stephen King’s Dark Tower books are being adapted to comic book form. Or, at least, a chunk of the first book is.
Can you order comics on Amazon? I’ve never done so.
I visited the Marvel Comics website associated with the project to learn more. They’ve got a little trailer for the series, but when I tried to access it I got this cheeky message:
Really? “A potentially unviewable experience”? Ignoring the fact that ‘unviewable’ is not a word, what exactly are they talking about? Will the trailer become a black hole, absorbing all light? Is it like an eclipse, and it’ll blind me if I look directly at it? Will it Goatse me (if you do not know what that is, do not try to find out–trust me on this)? Or, even worse, will it Gigli me? “Ah! It’s Unviewable!”
The hotel connection was a bit dodgy, but is this really my fault? And even if it is the user’s fault, surely that’s Marvel’s problem to solve. How about offering two different qualities of trailer? How about making it downloadable? In any case, they need a more helpful, friendlier error message.
I did eventually get a chance to watch that trailer, and it was pretty naff. Anybody who’d actually read the books wouldn’t opt for a narrator with that absurd accent.
7 Comments »
