Just noticed a very interesting practice from Amazon: the first three search results of the next page are pre-loaded.
One issue with search engine results pages is that people only rarely use more than the first page for a given query. Depending on the browsing context and the user’s purpose, Amazon probably sees a bit more use of its subsequent results pages, as people are using them as an alternative to browsing, or simply display more persistence because they’re pretty sure Amazon actually has the product they’re looking for.
Google focuses on the first page. Google Live Search constantly updates this first page of results, progressively increasing its usefulness, by making the best possible use of the input supplied by the user. I would guess this has marginally increased the success rate of Google searches, while further reducing the use of page 2 and more.
When clicking on the link to get the next page of results, there are a few moments when the screen is bare of useful information. Many services have started to refresh the results inside the existing page, with Ajax, which avoids having to re-draw the entire screen, and probably helps maintain the user’s context.
For example, LinkedIn scrolls back up, fades the current results (I blanked out the names on the screenshot below), and displays a “loading” device until the new results are available:
Still, the Amazon solution goes a step further: even for highly-motivated users, those few moments when the screen isn’t offering any information relevant to the task at hand are an invitation to switch to another task. With a fairly simple technical trick (keep 3 search results hidden to mitigate the wait), user time spent on system tasks (waiting for information to appear) is cut down to almost nothing. I expect Amazon has seen a significant rise in the usage of subsequent search results pages.
Amazon preloads search results
Just noticed a very interesting practice from Amazon: the first three search results of the next page are pre-loaded.
One issue with search engine results pages is that people only rarely use more than the first page for a given query. Depending on the browsing context and the user’s purpose, Amazon probably sees a bit more use of its subsequent results pages, as people are using them as an alternative to browsing, or simply display more persistence because they’re pretty sure Amazon actually has the product they’re looking for.
Google focuses on the first page. Google Live Search constantly updates this first page of results, progressively increasing its usefulness, by making the best possible use of the input supplied by the user. I would guess this has marginally increased the success rate of Google searches, while further reducing the use of page 2 and more.
When clicking on the link to get the next page of results, there are a few moments when the screen is bare of useful information. Many services have started to refresh the results inside the existing page, with Ajax, which avoids having to re-draw the entire screen, and probably helps maintain the user’s context.
For example, LinkedIn scrolls back up, fades the current results (I blanked out the names on the screenshot below), and displays a “loading” device until the new results are available:
Still, the Amazon solution goes a step further: even for highly-motivated users, those few moments when the screen isn’t offering any information relevant to the task at hand are an invitation to switch to another task. With a fairly simple technical trick (keep 3 search results hidden to mitigate the wait), user time spent on system tasks (waiting for information to appear) is cut down to almost nothing. I expect Amazon has seen a significant rise in the usage of subsequent search results pages.