I wonder if this makes sense:
 
In those categories where there are subcategories, instead of the image of a sample card, the subcategories were listed.
 
Pattiann

Quote from Pattiann_132699 on May 16^th, 2009, 7:18am:

 
Yes, lists are far more effective.  A person can see the range of choices in one view, making it simpler and faster to make a choice of where to go next.  The GCU All Cards Page is like this (a concise table).  
 
So let’s take an example.  Let’s say a shopper wants to find a Romantic Valentine’s Day card for instance, so they click on HOLIDAYS.
 
Instead of a simple table coming up, which would quickly show Valentine’s day, they see a LONG page of cards from 73 Holidays categories spread 3 cards wide and 25 rows long;  Holidays and cards they don’t care about!  So fine, they carefully scroll down, and the Valentine’s Day Holiday link appears in row 24 down near the bottom, a 10-15 second navigational process for many, with mouse slides or arrow presses.
 
OK fine.  They click that.  Uh oh, another full page of 42 categories and cards this time, and they don’t really know, without scrolling, if there is a Love/Romance category or not , or what it might be named.  Not knowing, they slowly and carefully scroll down through multiple rows of cards and category names hoping to find a mental match.  This is unlike the Holiday area where people already know Holiday names in alphabetical order and can navigate to them more quickly.
 
This scrolling and reading between an array of images can be rather irritating for people, especially if you are not familiar with the categories, and I can assure you, they are NOT looking at the images in the process.  Humans do not READ well this way.  One has to go slowly and try to remember what they’ve read as there is a real hodge-podge of category names under Valentines.  Finally the shopper narrows in on the Love/Romance category in row 11 of 14 and can finally start actually shopping.  Likely 30 seconds or more on this page with mouse slides and arrow clicks, and “irritation level” now elevated as they finally click over to a 50 page stack of 800 cards to browse.
 
Imagine instead, if their first click gave them as table of 73 holidays, like on the All Cards page, and the next click presented a table of 42 Valentines categories, with Love/Romance easy to spot in the table, they’d be shopping in less than 5 seconds rather than the better part of a minute, and without needing to scroll or become irritated.  Oh, who would prefer that Tom?  Must be just crazy talk.
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While I'm posting:
 
Saturday store visit report, 14.5 hour in,  ........ 1 visit.   Good grief.
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I must agree with Tom and Sue. I feel that, as things stand now, there is not a true (read: accessible without being daunted by numbers in the thousands) overview of what is available. The points made about how people read and remember are extremely important to keep in mind. Even when a customer wants to go quickly to the desired (sub)category, it's also crucial that there be a memorable impression of what else is available. Fast comparisons have to be feasible, as well as the fewest distractions possible, before the actual browsing for the final choice begins.
 
It's taken me a little while (and some "testing") to figure out how I really felt about this. It did look very pretty at first glance (especially after the orientation problem was corrected), and one might think that it's good advertising to show examples of GCU's wares as an enticement into the categories - but, as has been said much more logically and convincingly than I could, form should follow function. I'm sorry to say that I don't believe it's effective in this configuration.
 
Tom knows of whence he speaks! Like Sue, I'm grateful for the chance to participate in the process and for GCU's open-mindedness...

Having lived with the new menu a little while, I can say I agree with Tom and others who find the new menu ill-designed and badly thought out. Sure, showing card examples is a nice touch, but you can't click directly to the card, which makes it pointless. A simpler solution would have been drop-down menu trees in tabs. Can't say yet whether it's hurt our sales; we're waiting for more data.
 
Corrie
http://www.corrieweb.nl

I've had a couple of those big "swoop in" days.  Are we sure they are search engine days?
 
I know when my mother comes to visit my store because I get a big day from all her looking around.
 
I am glad your visits climbed Tom, now if sales will just take off with them.
 
-Whisper-

Hi All,
In my Google travels I managed to locate a page in the 'old format' which was helpful for a comparison with the new. One of the issues we had was that the cards buried in large categories eg Will you be my Bridesmaid? were never seen since folks were unlikely to browse past 5-6 pages.  
 
I had a thought (it occasionally happens) on the old set up in big categories the page #'s displayed at the top were very limited, 1-5, click on 5 and 3,4,5,6,7, were displayed, click on 7 and 5,6,7,8,9, were displayed and so on. If you were on page 15 it was unlikely anyone would get there.
However, if in the big categories all the page numbers were displayed according to how many there were then one could jump to page 11, page 19,whatever page you liked, back and forth, and also  clearly see how many pages there were to browse. This would also allow a shopper to mentally note what page a favorite was on and allow exposure for those cards buried in the middle pages.    
 
Would this have helped solve the problem and/or does this have any merit in the new system?
PS. Corrie drop down menu trees (on sub categories?) gets my vote.
My thoughts for the day.
Pamela

Instead of page numbers we could even have a "jump box" where someone could type a page number in.
 
If we do that could someone please remind the programmers that their programming language starts it's first number at zero and our pages start at one?  It is embarrassing to use the jump box on the artists page and know someone made a boo boo on that. (could be the same programmer that did the cards that number wrong on the pages of cards... 100-200 instead of 101 - 200.....)
 
 thanks,
 
-Whisper-

You might be anti boxes, but do you have any idea how many page numbers I would need?
 
Actually, do you have any idea what a pain it is to get to my center pages now?  
 
 
I'll take anything that gets me there quicker....  I have to invest a whole morning to get there now.
 
(and what fool decided that when you have made a fix the page would reset and you would have to work your way back to that section step by step AGAIN)  whew.....
 
-Whisper-