Comments on: Quiz: which of these search results pages perform best?

By: Clay Barnes

Clay Barnes — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 21:16:35 +0000

I wish I had seen this in time to vote before the announced results! I was leaning A on both counts (though published results cast doubt on anyone’s “perfect score” claims), but for different reasons than the results page suggest. I theorized that better overall usibility would improve all actions the site seeks to elicit. From this perspective, I noticed that the search refinement area was on opposite sides and reasoned that (at least for right-to-left language readers such as English used in the images) users encountering the filters first (Left) would tend to refine their results immediately if useful. Consequently, they would see more “interesting” options listed sooner than those who encounter the unfiltered results first. The latter group (without strong visual cues to draw their attention out of the natural reading flow and edit the filters) would often have to track relevence mentally which should produce higher pre-completion user attrition than the first group.

I didn’t see the details of the study (the link points only to the tester’s homepage), so I thought my reasoning might be of interest since it led to the same results testing observed.

By: Harry Brignull

Harry Brignull — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:44:55 +0000

Thanks everyone for having the guts to state your opinions and justifications. As it happens, design A won on both counts. Read more about it here.

By: And the winner was… - 90 Percent of Everything

And the winner was… - 90 Percent of Everything — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:33:22 +0000

[…] was about 120 respondents for last weeks quiz (Which of these search results pages perform best?) – not a bad turn out. What’s interesting is that quite a number of you were wrong, wrong, […]

By: David Hamill

David Hamill — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:27:01 +0000

I’m desperate to redeem myself from the last time. I’m guessing A for the first one because the cruise details are dicplayed a lot simpler, the button is below and close to the image.

I’m guessing B for the second one purely because there is less overall detail on the page and the number is very close to one of the images.

By: Danny Hope

Danny Hope — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:12:33 +0000

By: Harry Brignull

Harry Brignull — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:03:34 +0000

Well Danny, it was your idea!

By: Danny Hope

Danny Hope — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:00:54 +0000

I agree with Jon:

Clickthroughs to item detail page: A
Call me back requests: B

Although I think it would be good to see full length screenshots in order to get an impression of how the page looks when scrolled down.

Well done for making this a quiz by the way :)

By: Hanford

Hanford — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:02:38 +0000

I tried clicking on both, and neither did anything.

;)

By: Ryan Miller

Ryan Miller — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:23:39 +0000

A got more clickthroughs simply because the more info button is more obvious.

B got more Call Me Backs because conversely the more info button isn’t obviously positioned and seems somewhat disjointed from the rest of the search result, so the next action would be Call Me Back.

HOWEVER,

A might have gotten more Call Me Backs simply because it falls in the visual eye flow.

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:05:19 +0000

Hm…

Clickthroughs to item detail page: A
Call me back requests: B

By: LolaOye

LolaOye — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:58:15 +0000

I would say Design B. That ‘feels’ more like search results, plus it has more browsing info like the icons on Ship facilities.

Design A just doesn’t look like a search results page to me.

Do we get a prize for this? ;-)