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Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

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Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#161

Post by rapind »

smilliken wrote: post #138
ww520 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please DO NOT listen to this guy. This auto-focus to the search box misfeature absolutely ruins any page viewing navigation. For people who use up/down arrow or pgup/pgdown keys to scroll down the page (which is pretty much all laptop users), this focus stealing misfeature would frustrate them to no end. I won't go back to any site that does this.

Is it still a misfeature on pages that fit on one screen, e.g. google.com, or (my own company's) mixrank.com? Isn't a better strategy to optimize for the common use-case?

I think it makes sense on Google where that's all you're going to do (more than just a common use case, it's almost the ONLY use case, probably like five 9s).

I don't think it makes sense on Amazon. A typical amazon user may browse around and explore outside of search. Maybe most of the time they will search, but there are no doubt other use cases like using the fancy nav. It's even possible that they want to encourage user's the browse around a bit instead of finding what they want and leaving right away.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#162

Post by dylangs1030 »

Raphael wrote: post #146
Nycto wrote: post #43

Hey all, I'm on the team that built this. We also built the redesign that launched last year. In fact, this was part of that. The article pretty much nails our implementation. Point of fact: Our team is recruiting. If you dig UX projects like this, shoot our manager Chad an email: chaddes at amazon dot com

I've always found the 2-stage menu a major annoyance. Navigation always takes way too many steps: 1) hover "Department" if the window isn't wide enough; 2) hover category; 3) decipher the crazy sub-menu that appears to the right; 4) move mouse over and click the same category. I've always disliked doing this many steps. Please make the Department menu into links such that I can avoid the sub-menus.

You honestly find the demonstration in this link to be too many steps? It takes less than a second to navigate. Literally.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#163

Post by Legion »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #155
enraged_camel wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree completely. The fact that Amazon does not auto-focus to the search box annoys me greatly, since 99% of the time I find the items I'm looking for via search. Compared to Google, Youtube, etc. Amazon feels clunky.

Then why don't you just search via Google? "site:amazon.com bank of bob" or even most of the time you can just add the word amazon to your search query "amazon bank of bob" and I get exactly what I'm searching for. To me you haven't made any case at all why others should have to suffer so you can have auto-focus on Amazon when your needs are already met elsewhere.

Things like this are why I have DuckDuckGo as my browser's default search engine.

"!amazon thingamabob" (or just "!a thingamabob").

Way more convenient than going to the homepage and worrying about search auto-focus.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#164

Post by jamesjporter »

Legion wrote: post #163
nowarninglabel wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why don't you just search via Google? "site:amazon.com bank of bob" or even most of the time you can just add the word amazon to your search query "amazon bank of bob" and I get exactly what I'm searching for. To me you haven't made any case at all why others should have to suffer so you can have auto-focus on Amazon when your needs are already met elsewhere.

Things like this are why I have DuckDuckGo as my browser's default search engine. "!amazon thingamabob" (or just "!a thingamabob"). Way more convenient than going to the homepage and worrying about search auto-focus.

My favorite thing about DDG is that at this point there are so many bang syntaxes defined that if I don't know the syntax for something, I can often just guess and half the time I get it right!

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#165

Post by mixmastamyk »

enraged_camel wrote: post #144
ww520 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please DO NOT listen to this guy. This auto-focus to the search box misfeature absolutely ruins any page viewing navigation. For people who use up/down arrow or pgup/pgdown keys to scroll down the page (which is pretty much all laptop users), this focus stealing misfeature would frustrate them to no end. I won't go back to any site that does this.

I disagree completely. The fact that Amazon does not auto-focus to the search box annoys me greatly, since 99% of the time I find the items I'm looking for via search. Compared to Google, Youtube, etc. Amazon feels clunky.

Try keyword search on Firefox:

"a foo" to search on amazon, "g foo" google, "i foo" imdb, "m foo" google maps, "w foo" wikipedia, "u foo" urbandictionary, etc... I have more but they are not public sites.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#166

Post by mixmastamyk »

Legion wrote: post #163
nowarninglabel wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why don't you just search via Google? "site:amazon.com bank of bob" or even most of the time you can just add the word amazon to your search query "amazon bank of bob" and I get exactly what I'm searching for. To me you haven't made any case at all why others should have to suffer so you can have auto-focus on Amazon when your needs are already met elsewhere.

Things like this are why I have DuckDuckGo as my browser's default search engine. "!amazon thingamabob" (or just "!a thingamabob"). Way more convenient than going to the homepage and worrying about search auto-focus.

Firefox keyword search is more direct, though you have to define them yourself. See my comment above.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#167

Post by lancewiggs »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #162
Raphael wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found the 2-stage menu a major annoyance. Navigation always takes way too many steps: 1) hover "Department" if the window isn't wide enough; 2) hover category; 3) decipher the crazy sub-menu that appears to the right; 4) move mouse over and click the same category. I've always disliked doing this many steps. Please make the Department menu into links such that I can avoid the sub-menus.

You honestly find the demonstration in this link to be too many steps? It takes less than a second to navigate. Literally.

Yes. It drives me batshit crazy, and I avoid using these menus, and it decreases my propensity to use sites that depend on them. To me a menu should be simple. If I click on something I expect to go somewhere, not have my screen taken over.

Short takeaway - we are all different, us users, and what someone thinks is awesome design, someone else finds unusable. So providing multiple options is a must.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#168

Post by brianfryer »

what_ever wrote: post #143
cowpewter wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/rant I loathe online store sites that auto-focus the search box. Worst are the ones that do it on every single page, including item detail pages. I use the space bar to scroll webpages down, especially on my laptop, which has a very small screen so that I almost always have to scroll down to get past header crap and get to the meat of the page. And no mouse, just a mediocre touchpad. I can maybe accept auto-focusing…

I like the sites which takes you to the main input field of the page after pressing a single tab. That way, the page still has the focus when the page is loaded and you can easily get to the search box or login id by just pressing a tab.

This is my favorite part of Netflix's UI.

I really wish every website would set their primary search input's tabindex to 1.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#170

Post by kymmx »

A little bit more nerdy here.

What about the opposite direction, ie. moving from a sub-menu to its parent menu.

I see both Amazon and new Khan Academy menu shows instant opening of another submenu when my cursor moves over another parent menu item.

I think there needs to be some delay when your cursor stays on another menu item in case you go back to the original parent menu item.

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