21. Drop it, now!
Dropdown menus are all about choices and options. Too much of one and not enough of the other is unhealthy. Use sparingly, and only when you need to.
You can never have too much of a good thing – but then, dropdowns are a bad thing if there’s no thought behind where they appear on a site.
More Questions Than Answers
Dropdowns should only really be used when it’s imperative that the user is specific – so, when using a currency converter site, it’s understandable that we have to choose the currency we are using (e.g. GBP) and the currency we are converting to (e.g. USD). There is no room for error here and the software will only work if these options are used. The same is true for choosing a country for a shipping address, as the result will determine whether the product can be shipped there and the cost of shipping. Dropdowns should not be used when you are offering users a selection of products – this should be solved by clever navigation, browse categories and a search box.
A dropdown is effective when a product is available in different sizes or when you want to limit customers ordering multiple units. In the case of clothing sizes, the dropdown menu will be limited by the sizes you stock, and a good way to control customers from buying too many units of a specific promotion is to only offer a dropdown of numbers (say 1, 2, 3) rather than allowing them to enter in their own figure.
Don’t Be Smart
Dropdown menus are not the time to start getting witty, ironic or clever with your options. User patience with dropdowns is low at the best of times; what we want when we get there is for the options to be straightforward and obvious. Spell out your menu options in normal English (or whatever the mother language is of the site) and use your creative talents elsewhere. This includes not using confusing words, using slang or shortening words so that the list is more aesthetically pleasing.
Divide And Conquer
If your menu ends up too long and becomes unwieldy – sub-divide. There is no point having users scrolling down long lists looking for something specific. Offer categories first and then give the option of a dropdown menu as a last resort.
The only long list that is acceptable, mainly because it has become the industry standard, is the list of countries customers can choose from when subscribing to a site or entering their shipping destination. But there are tricks you can use to make this user-friendly. For one, bring the most common choices to the top of the list and repeat them again in their alphabetical order – so put UK, US to the top of the shipping address dropdown, if the majority of your customers are based there. With the best will in the world, nobody based in Afghanistan is likely to order a product or service from your site, and certainly not in the quantities to justify having their country top of the list. It is pointless to waste the time of your users scrolling through numerous countries before they find their own. Know your users and give them what they want. A personal bugbear of mine is how England is classified in dropdown menus. I don’t know whether to search for England, United Kingdom or Great Britain, because depending on the web site it could be any one of them. Put me out of my misery – offer all three options.
How did it go?
Q. Our dropdowns work fine, the users get what they want and there have been no complaints. What’s the problem?
A. No one is arguing that dropdowns don’t work – they do. But sometimes they are not the most effective way of giving users choices and options. If they work fine, that’s great, but you should always be looking to improve and enhance your site – both to stay ahead of the competition and to keep your site looking fresh. Run the exercise anyway and try to find a different way to express the options on your dropdown.
Q. We would like to improve our shipping destination dropdown. Do you have any other tips?
A. As well as sorting out Blighty, you might want to look at the countries on the list that your own country currently has trade embargoes with. If you are not allowed to ship to those countries there is no point offering the option. I’d also take a close look at the countries from where you are receiving the most credit card fraud. If the fraud outweighs the trade, it might be worth considering not shipping to those countries at all. Both of these ideas will shorten your country dropdown considerably.
Here is an idea for you…
Look at the areas of your site where dropdowns are currently employed. Is there something that could be done differently to still allow customers the same choice, but not through a menu? Why can’t these web page destinations be reached through the site navigation or through the search facility? If your dropdowns are essential, is there anything that you could do to shorten them or make the options more specific? Lastly, imagine that dropdown menus are no longer available; how would you approach replacing your menus and still allow users to navigate the site and make their choices? With the answers to hand, consider implementing the changes in favour of menus – it will make your site slicker, more logical and more user-friendly.
Defining idea…
‘It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.’
James Thurber
Defining idea…
‘Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.’
Voltaire