Avoiding Useful Content with Slick Javascript
October 16th, 2007
The user, a frequent traveler, wanted to find ways to impress his new girlfriend. WhiteTie, a luxury concierge and VIP service, seems to be just the ticket.
To ensure this is what he wanted, he visited the WhiteTie web site and started to look at the What We Offer links in the center of the page, suggesting he learn more by clicking on links with labels like Northwest Airlines, Restaurants, and Hotels.
Like most folks using the web these days, our user had the expectation clicking on the links would bring up a page with more content. However, clicking on the Northwest Airlines link didn’t seem to do anything. He clicked on it multiple times before giving up.
The Northwest Airlines content on WhiteTie.com
The second link, Restaurants, also didn’t behave as he expected. He told us he thought it would display a page describing the restaurants involved and the services WhiteTie offered. Alas, clicking on it just changed the image next to the link and swapped in 4 bullets with surprisingly little real value. (Just what are “other special amenities”, anyways?)
The restaurant content
Clicking on Hotels was the same.
The hotel content
WhiteTie charges a premium for their service. And they’ve spent a bit of it on some fancy javascript to swap out each content. Yet, we can’t help but wonder if their money would’ve been better spent on a set of plain-old HTML pages with some meaty descriptions of their service and its benefits.
October 16th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
But Jared, what about the “brand mystique”? If you tell people exactly what you offer where is the excitement of the discovery?
October 17th, 2007 at 12:10 am
Well, there’s at least a few ways they could have handled this better, excluding just the full page transition:
1) Use the benefit of javascript to add a transition effect to the content, that way, at least the user notices the changes.
2) Give those links a different treatment than others, maybe give a subtle clue, blue links with a dashed underline to indicate that the links are going to behaving differently than standard blue links.
3) Visually connect the selected link with the content that’s being swapped out, perhaps by moving the photo to the other side of the module, and adding a border or background around the link and the content that’s been updated.
I’m sure there’s more, but those 3 stick out right away.
October 17th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Other than the inane content, the problem is that a link is simply the wrong control. This is a clear case where it should be a tab control (or tab imagery, as Kyle implies in 3).
October 19th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
“…the excitement of the discovery?”
LOL
October 19th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Unfortunately, much of the subtlety we designers adore so much is lost on real people
January 6th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
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