Blink Design Library

Multiple Sites with a Single Cart

2011-12-20T19:59:19+00:00

Something we’re seeing: Companies with multiple commerce properties are tying them together in a single check-out experience. The examples below come from 1-800Flowers, Diapers.com, and The Gap. Global tabs at the very top of the site allow users...

A Persistent Utility Footer

2011-11-07T23:06:13+00:00

Kelley Blue Book displays a helpful footer that stays pinned to the bottom of the user’s browser: The links include generic functions (Share, Print, Sign in) as well as personalized content (My Recently Viewed, My Saved Cars, My KBB). Content...

Button Placement Update

2011-11-01T17:30:52+00:00

A post from the Design Library’s earlier days - “Button, Button, Where Goes the Button” - looked at form button placement across the web, Mac OS, and Windows. While the Mac and Windows have established button-placement standards, the web does...

Simple Top-of-Page Filtering

2011-09-16T21:06:59+00:00

Filtering functionality, while useful, can also add complexity to a page. Many sites use filters vertically arranged along the left side of the page, as shown in the example below: This example (from Endless.com) provides filtering across a...

Vertical Global Navigation That Works

2011-09-05T20:45:21+00:00

Horizontal global navigation often isn’t practical because the horizontal space can hold only a handful of top-level options. For example, what if your information hierarchy has 12 or 15 top-level items? You could display global navigation...

Shifting Alignments

2011-09-01T17:34:07+00:00

Price/feature comparison charts are handy for users—but this one could be misleading. The problem is that the column alignment shifts - the bold service level headers and “Select” buttons are not in alignment with the price comparison. The...

A More Usable Approach for Within-Page Links

2011-08-15T16:50:45+00:00

Over the years, usability studies we’ve done show that within-page links cause confusion for users. The reason people have developed a strong mental model that links take them to a new page (rather than a different spot on the same page). The...

Displaying Definitions in Context

2011-07-01T18:46:58+00:00

Providing definitions in context is helpful, particularly for technical terms users may not understand. This page on meningitis uses a dotted underline to differentiate definition pop-ups from links that go to a different page (which use a solid...

The Case of the Empty Queries

2011-06-17T22:29:57+00:00

A client reported that their search log showed a large number of “empty” searches were occurring. The likely culprit? The entry prompt inside the search field, which seems to be a call to action: Our recommendation was to make the text more...

Avoiding duplicated links

2011-01-04T23:50:31+00:00

The global navigation on Amazon.com normally shows a "Cart" button including the number of items contained in the Cart (click to see full-sized image): However, when a user is viewing their cart, the button (kind of) goes away: The button...