It is becoming relatively common for ecommerce websites to offer a “view all” (or similar) link on product listing pages hat will show all of the products in said category or search results (or, in cases with many products, far more than the default view).

The reason for this is that, a few years ago, a lot of time was spent trying to address download speed concerns, and etailers were worried about the wait time for a page filled with product images to display. So, each came up with a number they thought made sense, depending on their product type, image size, etc. Recently however, with the explosion of broadband, it is becoming increasingly important to have a way for a customer to see all the products on one page, for the simple reason that it is much easier to actually browse products this way. Taking that idea a step further, if a customers chooses to “view all”, they are inherently more willing to wait for a larger page to download. I know I am — I’d rather wait an extra few seconds to see the entire inventory than have to click from page to page.

That said, it annoys me that none of the retailers (at least that I have seen) who offer this feature use cookies to remember that I like to view all. Every time I go to Zappos, Eddie Bauer or Gap, for example, I have to select “view all” anew. I do this every single time. Why not write a cookie when this choice is selected and store it locally? If a customer changes the view, change the cookie!

This is the very essence of customer focus — determine what each customer wants and deliver it to them.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 at 2:27 pm and is filed under web UI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.