Thursday, December 6, 2007

Worst UI Ever? - Links

First of all, let me say that I love Ebay. How else would I be able to sell my extra Hannah Montana tickets? However, occassionally I find myself asking "huh?" Take this list of links for example:


What do you think the difference between Seller's Guide, Seller Central and Seller Tools is? I clicked on each of them looking for information about the Buy it Now option. I couldn't find any information on any of the resulting pages easily. Eventually I found my way back to the Seller's Guide, which is apparently the code name for Seller's Help, and found it by searching. The first time I was on the Seller's Guide page, I completely overlooked the search box since I had just done a search on the previous screen in the main search box which apparently only searches items. When searching for Buy it Now, I received, as you might expect, over 2000 products.


Here's the problem. The links all sound like the same thing based on their names. They could be slightly improved by adding tooltips assuming it is possible to articulate the difference in 3 to 10 words. To add to the problem, even after visiting those pages, I am still not sure what the difference between Seller Central and Seller Tools is.


The bottom line is that when you decide to add one more link to a menu, it is important to make sure it makes sense in the context off all the other links. All by themselves, each would make perfect sense, but when put together the problem becomes apparent.

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