Call For Design Help: CPAP.com Was This Helpful

I think this is a great feature and will help some types of shoppers.

The usability is good. I had no trouble understanding how it works.

Couple of thoughts

I believe you could improve usability by consistently using color/size/position. I suggest you ask your self what does yellow mean on the page? What does green mean? Are the most important things big? etc.
Consistently applying colors/sizes and positions help draw attention to the important things. What is the most important thing on the page? 2cond etc.

Yes/No green circles seem to draw the eye. while those are important to this feature I don't think they are the most important thing on the page. (Note the size plus intensity of the color vrs the light green/yellow used to separate reviews and the relative size of font in the circles vrs the font used in the text. You are also using a slightly darker yellow to show stars.) So both green and yellow colors are overloaded and each use intensity to mean different things.

I suggest the usefulness of the review is more important than the yes/no buttons and to get that information I have to read the text. (e.g 2 of 2 found this review helpful.) Note the bold 2 of 2 and the bold tag line for the review. Are they equally important?

What if you use a light green background to indicate the majority (supper majority, more than 5 what ever cutoff) thought the review was helpful. No color background for the review if not helpful or not sufficient reviews. Use yellow only for the stars rating. You have less need for the green/yellow to separate reviews. since you have added 2 text lines "8 of 10 found this review helpful. & Was this review helpful for you?"

I suggest you make the Yes/No circles the same size as the text. I would consider only having a yes button. Do you gain a lot by making it green, how much would it stand out if it was white text on a black button? If I only used yes I would change the text to say x people found this review helpful. (Many people don't do well with fractions (e.g. 2 of 5) and I have been told it causes a subconscious negative feeling.)

I would be glad to answer any questions or expand any thoughts. Usability is a very complex discipline and I could be optimizing the wrong thing.

I hope this is what you are looking for and please don't consider this a slam on the site. I think very highly of cpap.com.

Greetings,

This is awesome feedback!

Paloa, thank you for taking the time to write up such a detailed review. I want CPAP.com to be the very best it can be and I think your points of the use of color to feature most important aspects of a design are well taken. If that's a slam, keep slamming. You helped us out and I appreciate it!

We're going to be compiling all of this feedback, making final design decisions and launching it very shortly.

If you have last minute suggestions, its now or never.

Johnny

I like review systems like on Netflix or http://www.newegg.com. I agree more metrics supporting our specialized needs would be helpful and might sort out some of the Cpap.com is great reviews vs a unbiosed product review.