Should an order tracker timeline be in chronological or reverse chronological order?

Question

'Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.' - Søren Kierkegaard

In an ecommerce order tracker, where there are a list of 'events' (for example, order placed, out for delivery, delivered) - should the top event be the event furthest in the past, or the event furthest in the future?

I am leaning towards chronological order, so:

• order placed

• order out for delivery

• [delivery failed]

• [order rescheduled]

• order delivered

This goes against most websites which update the most recent event at the top - like Facebook, Twitter etc.

Is there a compelling reason why I should or shouldn't match that pattern?

Answer 1

Forward chronological order lends itself well to finite amount of data that tells a story. Reverse chronological order lends itself well to (potentially) infinite amount of data that loses usefulness over time.

For example, in Facebook, each post is listed in reverse chronological order, so you scroll back through history, but within each post the comments run in forward chronological order so you can easily follow the conversation.

Therefore, your order tracker should probably present the list of orders in reverse chronological order, so users can easily find the newest orders first, while the events of that order may be presented in forward chronological order, so users can easily understand and follow the progress of their order. If you also wanted to present useful information first, you might consider a top-level element before the list of events that provides the most recent status.

Current Status [ Delivered ]

Order History

Placed

Out for Delivery

Returned

Out for Delivery

Delivered

Answer 2

I also had this issue on the latest product I worked on and being our most important area of the product we went ahead and had quite a few user interviews to study the behaviour. We came to the conclusion that our users were expecting the first item to be the one furthest in the future(10 face to face user interview and over 200 online selected from different age ranges and domains). I cannot tell you that one way is better but I can share this information with you so you can draw your own conclusion. I do believe that this behaviour pattern is strongly affected by the large social platforms that use it.

Concluding our two week interview period for the endpoint client timeline we are presenting you the summary of our findings with a few statistical details to explain our final conclusion. Finally the interview was conducted on a pool of 237 users with ages ranging from 16 to 56, broken down in 6 different groups identified as following:

• Group Alpha: 78 subjects age from 25 to 40, good computer knowledge, past interaction with the product
• Group Beta: 26 subjects age from 16 to 25, good computer knowledge, past interaction with the product
• Group Gamma: 25 subjects age from 40 to 56, basic level computer knowledge, past interaction with the product
• Group Delta: 54 subjects age from 25 to 40, good computer knowledge and no past interaction with the product
• Group Epsilon: 33 subjects age from 16 to 25, good computer knowledge and no past interaction with the product
• Group Zeta: 21 subjects age from 40 to 56, basic computer knowledge, no past interaction with product

Our main goals were to determine whether our new method of approaching the timeline area is adding consumer benefit and if the issues should be approached in a chronological order or not. Grouping the issues in clusters of information was also one of the issues addressed.

The products demos that were available will be called from here on the X and Y where the X is the product with a chronological timeline and the Y a product with the reverse chronological order. Both of them have the grouping feature active.

Here are the results for the chronological/reverse chronological product choices of our pool of customers(we’ve represented the data with pie charts for ease of read, where X is orange, Y is blue, and irrelevant is green). Most of them choose the reverse chronological version of the timeline as being clearer and easier to read. Each category result in the following images:

Sorry for the different dimensions on the images, I made some quick crops from a pdf. This is part the information I am allowed to share, the statistical data I cannot due to company reglementations. I tried to translate the information as best as I can from my native language and striped down confidential information but I've made it on the rush so there might be grammar mistakes. Hope this helps you!

Answer 3

When it comes to usability, you should keep in mind that there are some patterns which you shouldn't ignore or deviate from.

The most common pattern used, when it comes to order status, is the one having the top item in the list being the furthest in the past. This is because the flow is finite (you start from ordering and you end at receiving your order). If you were to use the other way of displaying the information, it will create a disruptive pattern which may confuse the user (considering the fact the the user is not ordering something online for the first time in his life).

For more information, read this article regarding the UX patterns. (search on uxmag the article "The price of not using the UX patterns"). You will find that using the opposite way for displaying the list (the top event being the furthest in the future) will not be such a good idea.

I would recommend you to use your idea.

To be even more specific, take a look on the flow of a courier company regarding your order (this represents the most used pattern):

• first you are given an AWB tracking number.
• in order to keep track of your order, you just enter the company's website and search for your order status using that AWB.
• after you hit the search button, you will get a list with the updates.
• the list you see, is showing the furthest event in the past as being the top item (see the image bellow).

To make it even easier to understand, you can design and display the flow as a timeline spread horizontally. Something like this:

The image above shows the order status in this way: 1. Order placed // 2. Payment accepted // 3. Products handed over to courier // 4. Products in courier's deposit // 5. Products being delivered // 6. Products delivered

Both ways show the timeline having the top event being the furthest in the past. This is why I recommend you to use the idea you have and you shouldn't take as example websites like Facebook or Twitter (or any social media / news website for that matter) because in these cases the flow is totally different and it's not a finite one.

I hope that this answers your question.

Answer 4

Always as a user my interest/reason to track my order would be the current status of it and for that reason i would always go with reverse chronological order. So for a user tracking an order is about knowing the present status of the order and not when it was ordered/shipped etc.

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

I think you should actually provide both options because they fit with the two different behaviours/expectations that I think a user might have for what the tracking app does.

In the first instance (ideal scenario), the user places the order and everything is going well so they just want to know when something is going to arrive in the mail, in which case, they want to see when something is out for delivery upfront so they know when to expect something to arrive in the mail. In this case a reverse chronological order is good because the other details don't matter and perhaps you could even put a filter option so they only see out for delivery or delivered items.

The alternate scenario is that something hasn't arrived like it should, so they want to go through the history of the order and see how long it has been stuck at a particular point so they can chase up the person/organisation responsible for the delay. In this case you need a chronological order to help them figure out the steps that have already been completed and how long it has taken.

However, there are always going to be users that will use the app in their own way, which is why I think both options should be provided, with the default option for the ideal or most frequency use case, and the alternate option for the less likely scenarios.

Answer 6

A Delivery Tracking System follows a predefined process, where the process has a definitive start and finish and a number of intermediate steps, where each step may have different states.

Facebook and Twitter are very different. They display a continuous stream organised with most recent item first. There is no start or finish and there are no predefined steps or states.

So Facebook and Twitter are probably not good comparison examples to use as inspiration. Apples an Oranges.

It therefore makes sense to display the stages in the process up front, with Start first and Finish last because this follows the typical mental model of how a process will work. You can organise the process steps vertically or horizontally without braking this process mental model. Highlight the current stage and visually indicate the various states for each step, e.g. Completed, Current, Not Completed, etc.