Clear Location

Thanks Alex. I’ve played around with the setting now and have a better understanding.

I have to disagree on “…make location browsing easier” here. In specific because it is not a sitewide persistent state, and because location is modified without users’ specific interaction. If it was, which I think is how users would expect it to behave, then I might agree. But it isn’t sitewide and persistent, based on a user navigating off of GD….the problem of course is that GD vs non-GD is irrelevant and unknown to the user.

So this presents the issue of unexpected behavior when suddenly they are no longer filtered by the location that they selected after navigating “off GD.”

I think even greater than GD vs. non-GD is the fact that Location gets set, or unset, without direct user interaction. They may not even be aware or notice that it is being set or unset.

The fact that they can clear it by removing it from the “Near” search box, assuming they notice it and are still interacting with the search box, is good at least. I’m especially glad to see that if a user views a listing and then “backs” out to the grid/archive, that location remains unset and the grid results aren’t adjusted.

But even my own experience navigating the site, with both the Archive URLs setting as “Add City” as well as “Disable” proved confusing, both in the instances where I selected a Location, only to have it be unselected as I navigated and where it was selected because of my navigation.

Having the user experience being altered without the a users specific interaction, in this instance and I think most instances beyond GD, is not good…it becomes unpredictable and often unexpected, and possibly in this case, unknown…yet frustrating when they can’t find something they think should be there because the results are now altered/filtered by location but they haven’t realized it.

I know this is a challenging topic and everyone has differing opinions and desires on how these things should function. I hold the belief that this is not an optimal user experience due to the reasons above. I won’t assume that it is “easy,” as I remember lots of discussions around Location back in the day with V1, but it would be nice if, somehow, the 1) handling of location selection (I’ll call it “active vs. passive user input”) could be admin configurable at least, and in either case I think, 2) location setting could be made persistent sitewide (via cookie or something at least, even if the “Location” designation changes on non-GD pages, but reverts to selected location upon returning to a GD page).

Thanks again.

Alex,

Right, understand. Not to harp on it, but I think this is a key UX area, so please indulge…

My view is that this is a passive interaction at best, and one which the user may not even be aware of. In either case, I think the main issue here is specifically the passive nature of this.

For a large geo area, maybe this isn’t such an issue….one could assume that if I click on a listing for restaurants in California that I then want to see listings in California only. But for hyper-local sites where various cities might be contained within “reasonable consideration” distance, this could be very impactful.

In both cases of archive links (both Archive URLs and Archive URLs on Details Page; see *Note below) set or disabled, as a user, things happen that I may not specifically be expecting, wanting, or again, even be aware of.

Examples (4 primary use cases):

Archive links enabled, user not changing location:
– Click Restaurants (All locations)
– Click a listing (Location passively changed to Seattle)
– Click Fine Dining category link/icon from listing (Seattle)
– Go to Fine Dining category and view listings only for Seattle
{would consider this an unexpected user experience…we assume the user wanted to limit listings by Seattle}
– Click to homepage or non-GD page (Location passively changed to All locations)
– Click into Bars category (All locations)
– Click into a listing (Location passively changed to Redmond)
= Location changes are being made on the behalf of the user, which they may or may not expect, want, or even be aware of).

Archive links enabled, user actively changing location:
– Click Restaurants (All locations)
– Selects Seattle
– Redirects to Seattle location page
– Clicks Restaurants again (Seattle)
– Click a listing (Seattle)
– Click Fine Dining category link/icon from listing (Seattle)
– Go to Fine Dining category and view listings only for Seattle
{would consider this an expected user experience…user wanted to limit listings by Seattle}
– Click to homepage or non-GD page (Location passively changed to All locations)
– Click into Bars category (All locations)
– Click into a listing (Location passively changed to Redmond)
{unknown expectations…user may expect or understand location reset, or may have expected to still be limited to Seattle}
= Location changes are being made on the behalf of the user, which they may or may not expect, want, or even be aware of).

Archive links set to disable, user not changing location:
– Click Restaurants (All locations)
– Click a listing (All locations)
– Click Fine Dining category link/icon from listing (All locations)
– Go to Fine Dining category and view listings for all locations
{would consider this an expected user experience…user has not actively limited location nor has it been changed}
– Click to homepage or non-GD page (All locations)
– Click into Bars category (All locations)
– Click into a listing (All locations)
= Location changes are not being made on the behalf of the user, which is what they would most likely expect).

Archive links disabled, user actively changing location:
– Click Restaurants (All locations)
– Selects Seattle
– Redirects to Seattle location page
– Clicks Restaurants again (All locations)
– Click a listing (All locations)
– Click Fine Dining category link/icon from listing (All locations)
– Go to Fine Dining category and view listings for All locations
{would consider this an unexpected user experience…user wanted to limit listings by Seattle, which became reset}
– Click to homepage or non-GD page (All locations)
– Click into Bars category (All locations)
– Click into a listing (All locations)
{unknown expectations…user may expect or understand location reset, or may have expected to be limited to Seattle}
= Location changes are being made on the behalf of the user, which they may or may not expect, want, or even be aware of).
* Note: this example does change a little bit if Archive URLs are enabled, but Detail page disabled; but a passive change again happens clicking to Fine Dining from the listing.

In all examples, there are passive changes being made, perhaps with lesser extent on the Archive URLs enabled and only Detail Page disabled, but still points where potentially unexpected changes are being made.

I think users can understand that navigating away from the directory pages (ie to homepage or non-directory page) could/would/might reset location. What I think most users would consider unexpected is location being changed passively “on their behalf” in the various examples above.

I don’t know of any other sites that operate in this way.

Cheers

Stiofan,

Always a pleasure. Super impressed with the changes over the years and exciting to dive back in and resurrect my project!

And as always, appreciate your time and further detail. I totally understand everything is a balancing act, and speed as we know has become critically important for many reasons.

All in all, I do like the way a lot of this is handled and what is most critical is that someone backing out of a listing doesn’t have location changed and the result set doesn’t change on them. I’m sure I can play around a little more with the configuration and setup to get something I’m happy with.

I like that you are using TripAdvisor as a bit of a benchmark as I think they’ve done an amazing job and probably the gold standard above Yelp, AirBnB, etc.

Thanks for pointing out the location icon… I’d really like to request/recommend that instead of that, a more prominent indicator for clearing could be made, perhaps with the clearing indicator to the right of the location name (https://fontawesome.com/icons/times-circle?style=regular), perhaps like this:

!Chicago x

One thing I think TA does that also helps with this is the breadcrumbs and forcing the user to select a location even upon entering into any of the categories.

I know Yoast or other 3rd party tools can be used for breadcrumbs to duplicate that, and the “location force” is also mixed…for a large site like TA, totally makes sense, maybe not so much on a hyper-local.

Thanks as always for listening. I know you take the feedback and recommendations into consideration and work them in when possible.

Cheers