epicurious: so much goodness

There are many things I like about Epicurious.com, ranging from the delicious recipes to the impressive UI. I’m still working on identifying all the interesting features I think work well, but here are a few.

1. They split their search paradigm into a simple keyword search, advanced search, and browse. All three of these are easy to use and straightforward.

2. The results page is elegant, yet offers a lot of information and tools.

3. Even though they could offer a ton of options to refine with, their left nav only shows one set of sort options, one set of filters, and a “search within results” keyword box. Advanced search is promoted, but not very visibly.

4. The listing display is easy to scan and informative. I like the little icons that communicate different attributes of a recipe such as “healthy”, “quick and easy”, “wine pairing”, etc.

There’s more to like, but this is all for today.

Messaging that there’s nothing else to refine by – B&N

Barnes & Noble are using Endeca for navigating their online catalog. For most part, their left nav is pretty standard, but they are on to something interesting with showing a special message when you reach the end of all possible refinements. It could use more work, but it’s an interesting idea.

decent left nav – dawdle

Another example of a nice classic left nav implementation can be found at Dawdle.

collapsed navigators, bizrate

Bizrate.com collapses their left nav navigators by default. Con: it hides the values you can refine by. Pro: makes all the options visible. In the same screenshot, also notice their treatment for results for my keyword search that were found in other subcategories.

 

screenshot

advanced options with multiple selection, ebay motors

ebay motors

Cool concept for all refinements in one interface, but I worry about over-steering to zero results all in one step.

varied and customized faceted navigation, endless.com

Faith just sent me a link to endless, pointing to their faceted navigation. It’s a classical implementation in a left nav bar, but you can see that they put thought into each navigator specifically, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach. I haven’t used the site extensively yet, but it seems like it would work nicely.

Category navigator:

Brand navigator (multiple select as well as keyword search), color family, and shoe size:

Heel height and price:

One thing i’m not sure works well is their search state breadcrumbs. They are in the left nav, where you selected them instead of somewhere more visible.

pretty left nav design, bluefly

Nice font, visually pleasing. I like the two-column solution for some of the navigators. Their search state messaging is not very visible though, I wonder how well it’s working out for them.

starting over, two examples

kayak

trulia

ncsu libraries & endeca, traditional faceted browsing

A faceted browsing classic. NCSU Libraries search, powered by Endeca (via Findability.org)

ask.com search page – all sorts of interestingness

The ask.com search result page is split into two “frames”. The main content container (search results) scrolls, but the left navbar and top tabs stay constant. I haven’t come across this feature anywhere else, and I wonder how important it is to the user, but it’s an interesting idea. It is useful if you really want your users to use your navigation after they have reviewed a bunch of results.

In general, the ask.com results page feels very clean and concise.