Screen Size Revisited and Multiple Site Shopping Experiences.
Mr. Usability Guru, Jakob Nielsen has a new article up on his site: Screen Resolution and Page Layout. It discusses the point I brought up recently here on Seven87: designing web experiences for people, not hardware.
Jakob and I wholeheartedly agree on the liquid or flexible width layout being the most curteous to users, allowing for positive experiences and several resolutions, as barely a majority (60%) have a 1024×768 screen size. He does advocate to “optimize” for a 1024×768 screen though… can’t say I totally agree but there are always gives-and-takes in business. 8-)
He also brings up near the bottom of the article some statistics on productivity improvements on larger screens. Very interesting, as I felt this way intuitively, but never thought it could be quantified so easily. I switch between a 12 inch iBook and a 23 inch desktop display at home, and a 19 inch pc display at work… I think I work okay on the 12 inch screen, but do feel like I work quicker on the larger screens.
Finally he uses the phrase “parallel browsing” in reference to the concept of more that one application being used at one time. On this point, we are completely on the same page.. (sorry, bad pun). He references a study he’s done earlier this year on B2B shopping habits. It’s generally about how shoppers use multiple types of sites to accomplish their shopping goals; reviews-type sites, vendor’s sites, search sites and retailer’s sites.
I think this is one concept that all the managers of these type of sites should keep in mind… your users are NOT using your site exclusively! Check this out:
In the total elapsed time of 44 minutes and 25 seconds, the user had 93 pageviews across 15 different sites. On average, she spent 29 seconds per pageview.
Wow… very interesting to see they hit 15 sites! I’m sure very few site managers consider this in their goal and task lists or persona designs. I know I will take this into consideration on my future projects.
What other types of sites make up your customer’s browsing experience? Where does your site fit in to their end goals?
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