Should Your Online Store Use Tabbed Boxes?
Nov 16th, 2009 by admin
Tabbed boxes are one of the best ways to fit more content on a page without increasing page length or cluttering the page and they have become more and more popular on ecommerce sites in the past few years especially on product pages.
Picture of Should Your Online Store Use Tabbed Boxes? [source:getelastic.com]
But one concern I always have when reviewing websites that use tabbed boxes is do they really get noticed by customers? Or are they too subtle?
I recently worked with an online retailer that had very poor attachment rates for cross-sells and upsells. The culprit? Product recommendations were hidden behind a tab that nobody clicked.
Here are some examples of tabbed boxes on e-stores:
Subtle text link tabs can also be overlooked easily:
Sometimes tabs dont even look like tabs (Eddie Bauer uses orange boxes):
These examples are shown in isolation so its easy to notice the tabs. But when you place these elements on a web page that competes with other design elements, the tabs can hide.
Did you notice the video tab as your eye scanned this page?
How many returning customers suffering from banner blindness start the sign up process all over again because the returning customer option is hiding?
If your site uses tabbed boxes make sure you know that the benefits of the box outweighs the risks that content and calls to action may be missed. Make sure youre testing them against expanded versions of your content, tracking clicks on tabs or conducting user tests where you observe customer interactions.[source:getelastic.com]
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