Hot answers tagged content
25
The best method is to use the lower bound of a statistical confidence interval.
I won't go into detail about how to do this, as Evan Miller has a great post on How NOT to sort by average rating for a Bernoulli distribution - which is what you have.
The main reason that you would use this method is to find a balance between the average vote and the number ...
22
Taking all the nuances into an account I still think that you should not remove the search functionality, but make search field smaller instead (or change it somehow so it still be functional but within a lesser space), so visitors who would like to use it will still be able to do it.
An example:
20
Now considering these two things: the low percentage of searches per visit and the queries being used I lean to the idea removing the search functionality altogether to un-clutter the navigation bar (the search function takes up 25% of the navigation width).
My question: is this reasoning sane? Or am I overlooking something?
The Search feature ...
17
Fading the edge of text can be a useful alternative to ellipses, and I would argue is superior in some ways.
Don't Confuse the Content
Ellipses replace text content to do their job, which can cause confusion about what the actual text is. Does it include the "..."? If I cut/copy/paste, does that come along? A fade changes the way the content is ...
17
I vote A. I read the result/s initially as result per second.
Result(s) seems more natural, but I would prefer the option were you'd detect if the number is larger than 1 and change result to results.
Maybe take a look here: english.stackexchange here the (s) seems to be the standard.
Another option is to put it like this:
Matching results: 1
With ...
11
A good way to test if content is the problem is A/B testing. If you are dealing with a product page, have two different versions of the product page written up by the content developers, then split the users in half - each viewing only one of the content pages, and compare the completion rates for the two groups. If there is significant variance in ...
11
I think the question you should be asking is what should be my content strategy and how should I define that to drive my site navigation..
That said, there are multiple steps in defining your content strategy :
Plan your content:
This is the initial phase of any site and should involve the questions such as the objective of the site, the user group which ...
10
I've solved this task using card sorting in a low tech, hands on session with my client and/or users.
Write down all menu items onto index cards and let the participants sort the cards in a way they think it is correct.
You will find a lot more information on the internet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_sorting
9
I am going to go with Schroedingers Cat's answer but I would recommend keeping the tabs active and present a notification such as there are no bookmarked people or something along those lines. The reason being some people might not understand that a tab is grayed out or inactive and might try to click it and get confused.
From an anecdotal point of view, I ...
9
A corporate site re-design is full of more design by committee pratfalls and pitfalls than you even realize exist just yet, which include:
Deprecated content that still needs to be supported
Brand guidelines you have to adhere to
Political history behind the current design (which will affect your ability to make changes)
All those sub-brands that need to ...
8
The intent of modal windows is to serve situations when it’s logically impossible to proceed without completing an activity This includes things like getting the user name and password before interacting with a page or window, or confirming a dangerous action, or waiting for protracted processing that cannot be conducted in the background (e.g., ...
7
I would not link the abbreviation only. The abbreviation should be placed in brackets after the first (and only) use of the full phrase which is abbreviated. The abbreviation is therefore in brackets as an advisory of the contraction and of its subsequent use in exchange for the full term. The abbreviation is not in itself the item that requires linkage, it ...
7
Whatever you do, telling someone that they can't access certain content is always going to be a poor experience. The only thing that you can really do to deflect the negative feeling is to explain why you can't show it.
"... due to US sanctions, we are not legally allowed to show this content in your country"
"Copyright agreements with XYZ publisher mean ...
7
If you are using English, then the most common way is option A. 100 matching result(s).
However I would strongly discourage using this, as it makes it very difficult to internationalise your application. I would suggest finding a way of wording it that does not require a reference to a singular or plural noun. I would rather use:
Matching results: ...
6
This article on landing page best practices has these UX-related recommendations:
Ensure the primary headline of your landing page matches the ad visitors clicked to get there.
Make your call to action (CTA) big and position it above the fold.
Use directional cues to direct attention to your CTA.
A landing page should have a single purpose and ...
6
As a rule, hiding and showing things is a bad idea, because it changes the users navigation without them doing anything. Disabling them is a good idea, or showing them without content - depending on how you implement them.
My personal preference would be disabled tabs, with rollovers to tell me why they are disabled, but your user base may have other ideas.
...
6
I am actually in the middle of a large redesign project for Cisco.
The first thing I did was ensure I had a master list of all pages. Most pages are templates, and have the same page structure. So I could group similar page structures together.
I then analyzed our site analytics database to see what users are using. This may not be as straight forward, so ...
6
Understanding the content
To be able to understand the content currently available on the site you can't only rely on the navigation menu, tagging systems or search which is where you start. Get your view of where content lives before you ask the users and editors of content today. You need to interview and observe content editors and content consumers ...
6
There's no such thing as content strategy for mobile.
That's the first line in the introduction of this book.
It then goes on to say - as you will find out when you get the book:
There is such a thing as a content strategy that plans for how you’ll
publish and maintain your content across all these new and emerging
platforms: smartphones and ...
6
JohnGB's answer works well at the top of a ratings list, but it causes problems further down the list. For an example, using 95% confidence intervals:
A has 100 upvotes, 3 downvote (97%). Confidence Interval: (0.917, 0.990)
B has 10 upvotes, 0 downvotes (100%). Confidence Interval: (0.722, 1)
C has 180 upvotes, 100 downvotes (67%). Confidence Interval: ...
6
The landing page of your site is a chance to grab people's attention with something that they are likely looking for. You are choosing to not grab their attention with anything, and when you don't demonstrate why staying is interesting, people will leave.
As it stands now, your landing page amounts to a menu. I don't see anything that you are gaining by ...
5
It can be, if you answer yes to anyone of these questions:
Has your sidebar remained the exact same for the last 3 months?
Does your sidebar exhibit signs of “sidebar creep” ?
Was there a time when people clicked around in your sidebar, but now you’re thinking you might have dreamed it?
Do you have more than 4 affiliate buttons showing at one ...
5
A few ways:
Make the content consistently relevant and helpful.
Actively work to counter ad-blindness, that is, don't show any ads at all on the right column.
Weight the right column visually with color, font, sizing etc so it feels like an important part of the page.
Have other parts of your site refer to the right column - in the main body, include ...
5
As the other answers generally agree, what you basically want to do is, in effect, to bias the rankings for items with low vote counts towards some "default" rank — which might be the mean rank, if you want an unbiased estimate, or a very low rank if you subscribe to the idea that an item should be ranked low until it's proven to deserve a higher rank.
...
5
This is a difficult one to answer but there quite a few myths out there. For example the previous answer says...
"For example, you may want people to use the mobile site to view all the products, but not necessarily to purchase or rate/review the products."
This is based upon the idea that people browse products but don't go through the whole checkout ...
4
It's totally okay to leave sidebar empty, white space will give clean and professional look to a website.
Take a look at some good examples of websites with single column:
Trent Walton
Sofa
iA
4
Remove the sidebar from the layout. Shrink your wrapper from 960px to something smaller if necessary.
You say:
I'm reluctant to leave the sidebar empty [...] even though this seems
to be the most reasonable solution.
You're reluctant to use the most reasonable solution?
It sounds as if this happened because the website has been designed without ...
4
The simple answer is that people are more interested in newer content than older content.
With old content first, people will come to a site and first be shown something that they have seen before - bad UX. Then they will have to remember what page they were on last - bad UX. Then they have to navigate to some page which may not be easily accessible ...
4
Summed up:
The point with gradients and fadeouts 2) always is the same: They don't play well with bad monitors/LCDs.
The Contrast problem
Left: looks good on designers monitor || Right: fading out much earlier.
The colour range problem
Bad Monitor:
Good Monitor:
As you can see above, not every user will share your personal experience on your ...
4
It's a selling point. By showing that the search results were acquired in a short amount of time, they're advertising the speed and efficiency of their search algorithm.
This doesn't really affect the majority of users in a meaningful way, but from a UX perspective, they choose to show this off because it enhance (in a subtle way) the trust factor inherent ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
