Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

Whether you are more familiar with the term guided navigation, attribute filtering, multi-attribute navigation or guided search (there are more although these are some of the main industry terms used) this type of advanced navigation can provide visitors to your e-commerce store/online booking system/content rich product site with an invaluable user experience – if implemented correctly.

What is multifaceted navigation?

In short this is an advanced navigation method where shoppers can filter out large sets of products or content by a variety of product attributes (sizes, colours, features, price range, specifications).

User benefits of multifaceted navigation

1. they can choose to be specific about the products which they are being shown
2. your users are empowered by the way you allow them to dynamically manage your product database
3. users can compare products by specific features, for instance when looking for a TV you can specify to see only TV’s that are 1080p and that are 46 inches
4. your users can shop how they are used to in a good high street store. ie. they tell the salesperson that they have so much to spend and are looking for particular product features or sizes, and they are then shown the products which suit their requirements
5. your user can find the products specific to their needs in a more efficient way, speeding up their browsing journey in what may well be a small space of time they have to shop online
6. your users don’t need to to visit multiple product pages and read each product description to know whether it matches their requirements
7. long, scrolling product listings pages (pre-product page) are eliminated as they can filter out the products which don’t match their needs
8. combined with the more widely used sorting techniques (price hi-low, price low-hi, latest, bestsellers, closest to your location ie. for a hotel) faceted browsing providers users with all the tools they need to hone in on the products/items which they are in a position to purchase
9. potentially confusing and bewildering amounts of products or items can be managed in a way which allows the visitor to focus their shopping experience on just the items which are suitable to them
10. users will reflect positively on the browsing experience with your website, in turn reflecting less favourably on your competitors who don’t provide this type of advanced navigation

Best practice advice

• Indicate how many products will be displayed when choosing a specific filter – users not only will get an understanding of your catalogue size but they will see whether by filtering by a particular attribute they will be narrowing their potential options too much to give them enough choice to make a buying decision
• Provide the ability to choose multiple filters across different attributes – this ensures that users have a truly dynamic and personalised browsing experience rather than only filtering a single attribute ie. colour or size
• Allow the user to switch filters on an off on the same user interface, rather than having to click back to be shown the different filters available for a particular attribute
• Encourage users to use this form of navigation with a clear, user friendly interface, rather than this form of advanced navigation being lost in a cluttered navigation menu
• Where applicable provide slider filters to allow users to specify exactly the upper and lower limits of a particular attribute they want to control, such as the lower and upper limits of their new house budget, rather than limiting them to specific tears of prices ie. £200,000 – £300,000
• Allow a user to select multiple filters for 1 attribute, allowing them to be even more specific in the features they are looking for within a range of products (whether this be clothes, insurance, holidays or houses)
• Don’t overlook the overall usability of your web application just to include multifaceted navigation – if implemented poorly these advanced navigation options can confuse and frustrate visitors

Typical web applications that benefit from multifaceted navigation

• E-commerce stores – selling a large number of products in each category range, allowing users to filter the products to focus in on what suits their budget and requirements
• Holiday, flight and hotel websites – users can input a variety of requirements (for instance, distance from beach, hotel star ratings, user reviews, near by attractions, distance to town centre) and see hotels which match these specific requirements
• Estate agent, housing websites – users can specify a variety of criteria (price bracket, number of bedrooms, distance from a local amenity, front or back garden, conservatory) and be presented with only the houses which satisfy the different criteria
• Price comparison sites – dependant on whether the user is looking for car insurance or their next mortgage, they can specify their unique requirements
• eCRM systems – where you are looking to filter out customers which match a series of requirements, such as contact method preferred, industry, annual budget and distance from a particular city

Examples of multifaceted navigation

Multifaceted navigation on Argos.co.uk

Multifaceted navigation on Hotels.com

Multifaceted navigation on Hotels.com

Multifaceted navigation on Uswitch.com

Multifaceted navigation on Skyscanner.net

Examples of where multifaceted navigation would significantly enhance the user experience

Kodak.com, a site which would benefit from multifaceted navigation

Currys.co.uk, a site which would benefit from multifaceted navigation

Homes4U.co.uk, a site which would benefit from multifaceted navigation

Mytravel.co.uk, a site which would benefit from multifaceted navigation

Advanced techniques to further enhance the users experience

• Maintain users key filter selections when they return to the site or begin their browsing process again, such as the price range that suits them or their preferred holiday destinations, for instance
• Where applicable provide sliders to allow for unique values to be chosen for the likes of price ranges, rather than having specific brackets of prices ie. £50 – £60
• Use interactive colour pickers as a more engaging way for your users to filter your product range.
• Consider user generated tagging, allowing your users to tag products/items as they see fit which in turn provides completely new attributes on which to filter content within your site

Further reading on navigation techniques and best practice

• tagging content and providing tag clouds to represent large sets of data
• suggestive/predictive search
• dynamic categorisation and shopping by user profiles and customer groups
• Navigation comparison between Kodak and Fujifilm

What are your experiences of multifaceted navigation?

I would really like to hear about your experiences, both as users, faceted navigation providers and from people on the client side involved in implementing navigation methods.

• How beneficial do you find this style of navigation?
• What sites do you feel are pushing the boundaries in navigation?
• What further user benefits would you add to the list above?

Yesterday I attended the very engaging Forethought by Four event, part of the Future Culture series of events by Manchester Digital, the trade association for Manchester based digital and ICT companies.

This event was the kick-off for Futuresonic 2008, which is described on their site as:
“5 days and nights of live music, art premieres, exhibitions, club nights and events featuring a world-class programme of over 300 artists in 30 venues and spaces across the city centre. Futuresonic is an international festival of Art, Music and Ideas now in its 12th year occupying the orbits of both digital culture and music.”

Introducing Forethought by Four was Shaun Fensom, chairman of Manchester Digital, and he duly introduced the following 4 speakers:

• Justin Hall – CEO, Gamelayers, and a founder of PMOG
• Aleks Krotoski – blogger, columnist, podcaster, The Guardian
• Matt Jones – Founder, Dopplr
• Chris Heathcote – head of service & UI Portfolio for Nokia / anti-mega.com

Although all 4 speakers provided stimulating talks, with not a single bullet point in sight on each of their visually rich presentation slides, I was most engaged with the talks from Justin Hall and Matt Jones. Justin is a Founder of PMOG (Passive Multiplayer Online Game) which is, arguably, a model for the next stage in the evolution of web 2.0, and Matt the founder of Dopplr.

Timing is most definitely everything! – just a few seconds ago I received the beta invite for PMOG from Justin, who I chatted with at the end of the event (PMOG is currently in closed Beta with invite and queuing only). Thanks Justin!

Matt talked about the continual need for applications and services to allow people to upload personal information to the web, as a way of allowing us to share information with our friends and members of online communities. This he says makes information about us much more interesting when the data can be compared to other people around the globe or with similar characteristics and consumer habits.

Monitoring and Sharing Energy Consumption Data

Examples from Matt of uploading and sharing personal information and preferences were Last.fm and Muxtape, although Matt also talked about a new invention which sits in your home and monitors usage of all of a homes utilities (gas consumption, electricity usage, carbon emissions etc) with the ability then to upload this information to the web to allow you to see how you compare to other people and families in similar size houses as you. In turn this may identify ways in which you can adjust your day-to-day usage of utilities to be reduce carbon footprints and reduce energy bills.

What Now, Even More Social Networks?

Justin also talked about the vast amount of social media experiments being developed, pointing to the speed in which new prototypes can be pulled together and released for public consumption. An interesting idea to encourage usage of social networking sites is to offer rewards for people using networks, such as how Linked In provide you with a ‘Profile Completeness’ indicator, which just likes games provides encouragement to continually interact and add information onto the network in order to complete your online profile/persona.

With the amount of social media experiments and new social networks, Justin touched on user fatigue, with the classic case of having to input, yet again, your name, email, DOB, friends, contacts etc – the list goes on.. OpenId, although not directly mentioned in the talk, certainly is one great way to begin tackling some of this fatigue, and as expected PMOG provides this log-in facility.

New social networks will always have some users trying the service initially, but once that initial ‘buzz’ has gone its getting even more difficult to build sustainable, user rich social networks.

Information Overload – will any real work get done!?

Finally Justin mentioned Attent with Seriosity, an application which plans to address the information overload experienced particularly by corporate organisations – see how they describe the application:

Attentâ„¢ with Seriosâ„¢ tackles the increasing problem of information overload in corporate email using psychological and economic principles from successful multiplayer online games and market economics. Attent creates an economy with a scarce new currency (Serios) that enables users to signal the importance of their outgoing email by attaching value. Recipients can use the Serios received to prioritize their attention to messages, and in return use their Serios to assign appropriate weight to their responses. Attent also provides tools to analyze and manage communication patterns and information networks in the enterprise.

Finally, a quick mention to Aleks Krotoski talk, where she emphasised the importance of trust and customer engagement, in particular for e-commerce stores. This really struck a cord with me especially with the recent launch of our e-commerce platform, where trust and engagement have been two of the key areas addressed for launch and more importantly will be integral areas of focus as part of the continual evolution of the platform.

All being said this was a really interesting event put on by Manchester Digital – its just a shame the attendance wasn’t as strong as the panel and talks merited.

Ah the satisfaction of big businesses adopting simple new eCRM practises to improve the customer experience..

A few minutes ago I booked my car into my local Peugeot service department for an MOT. Requesting my registration number to check whether they had my details on record, the lady on the phone duly located my personal and car details from some work I had done earlier this year.

Confirming that I am OK to book in for 1st thing the following morning at 8.30am, I was a relieved man knowing that my MOT ran out on Monday and I’m currently driving round somewhat illegally (if only having got some beers for last nights Man Utd v Sheffield Utd game, but anyway I digress…)

At the end of the call I immediately headed to my Remember the Milk account to add this task in for the morning. No sooner had I clicked my Firefox tab containing my account I received a text message as follows:

Thankyou for booking your vehicle with us on 19/04/07 @ 8.30 Hrs. We look forward to seeing you. Kind Regards. Elton Peugeot Bury

What a simple yet satisfying piece of customer management – as I mentioned I have used them on other occasions this year and this is obviously a new facility within their customer management system when a job is booked in.

If I wasn’t already satsified with their telephone and face to face customer service (which for the record I am) this new method of customer contact is very pleasing to experience.

So there we are – joining the list of concert ticket ordering, event attending and other text message customer service events, car servicing from Elton Peugeot Garages in Bury is now using text messaging as part of their eCRM solution!

To summarise

As mobile use continues to grow and people use their devices for more than phonecalls and text messages, more businesses will adopt these more instant and personal customer relationship management systems. This will bring benefits to businesses and customers industry wide…