Prioritizing Lists

On too many websites, there is an overabundance of features vying for the user’s attention. Too many colors, animations, blinking texts and graphics tend to annoy users by blending everything into each other. If everything on a page is equally outstanding, nothing stands out. The same goes for everything being equally dull.

As a designer, you want to advise and guide users to the most important or most promising choices. As Jakob Nielsen points out, “the goal is to give users more of what they need. And easier access to what they need.”

Prioritization is essentially accomplished in two ways:

• Listing items that users are most likely to want on top or made to stand out;
• Highlighting new items on the homepage and also featuring a link to hot topics that may be buried deep within the site on the homepage.

Using prioritization will essentially guide users to the most important and most promising content on any given site. This is not to say that user’s will not be free to go anywhere they please; prioritization will merely point towards the more prominent content.

Some ways to guide users with prioritization include, but are not limited to:

• Editorially selecting the most important stories or items and giving them better headlines or more visible placement much like newspapers do;
• Placing best-selling products at the top of search listings, as this is what most customers are looking for. It means nothing to a customer that items be organized according to internal attributes such as SKU/Item numbers or even that they be in alphabetical order.
• Guiding users to areas of the site that have high activity with links on the homepage. This will simplify user experience and keep them posted on hot topics.
• Feature popular or high rated contributors’ material.
• Highlight the most popular items in a list that is sorted by another criterion.
• Mark new items with a small, but noticeable “NEW” icon. This is not necessary on pages where new items are constantly uploaded.

These suggestions are meant to be tips on how to effectively guide users on your site toward more prominent information. Make sure not to overwhelm users by highlighting every item or bore them by not featuring any featured items. Allow them to surf freely, but point them towards the new or hot-topic information. This will surely improve usability.