Helping people find the products they want to buy
Product List Before
Product List After
The original and redesigned product list. With pictures, star ratings, and versatile sorting options, the new solution addresses the user's desire for more product information sooner.
Product Page
Observing users scan long lists of reviews, we saw them alternate reading positive and negative comments. The redesigned product page placed recommending and not recommending opinions side-by-side. The honesty implicit in showing the bad with the good bolstered Epinions' brand attribute of transparency.
Review Page
Users expressed frustration at having to closely read each review in order to get the gist. The redesigned opinion page presents a summary at the top, with pros, cons, and the bottom line. Readers can quickly decide whether to read the body of the review or move on.
The initial release of Epinions.com served visitors seeking to write reviews of products, but poorly supported those researching product decisions. Before joining Adaptive Path, Peter Merholz served as Creative Director of Epinions, leading a whole-scale redesign of the site.
A guiding force for the site's new information architecture were Epinions' core brand attributes: Informing, Passionate, and Transparent. These provided a foundation for a coherent user experience not found among competitors.
The project began by synthesizing user data from a wide-range of sources, including customer feedback, usability testing, and log-file analysis. Analysis revealed the importance of getting products in front of users sooner, and the team recognized that, contrary to conventional wisdom, product pages are not end points but hubs-people used individual products to orient themselves to the wider product category.
Conceptual models of the users' behavior were developed, and together with the brand attributes drove the logic of the site's design. Peter oversaw the integration of interaction design, visual design, and content strategy, marrying the principles of usable interface with an engaging aesthetic.
Handing off PhotoShop files was a no-no. The Creative team's final products were an HTML-based visual style guide and detailed interaction specifications explicitly designed for easy implementation by Epinions' overtaxed engineering team.
For a more detailed case study of the Epinions.com redesign, read Web Site Redesigns by Darcy Dinucci.
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Interested in learning more about the services we provided Epinions?
Read the full descriptions of our usability testing and information architecture offerings.
Where do great ideas come from?
At Adaptive Path, our ideas are driven by the work we do. We do consulting for user interface and user experience design, and offer conferences, training and education for UX designers.
From field ethnography, UI wireframes and task flows, to visual design and implementation, we do it and we teach it.
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