Product List Tabs e.g. 1-5, 6-10 etc

[fergusw]

Just want to see if there would be any interest or use for the following amongst the community:

Synopsis:
You have a section with many products (15 products in this example) listed on the page. Instead of the scrolling list you want to have a neat way to display only a certain number at one time, with some navigation (e.g. tabs) to allow the browser to show the other products in the list.

Example:
Please see the following example.
teclan Actinic product list tab example

Functionality:
The number displayed at any one time is defined in a simple variable. In the above example in Books1 section it is '3', in Books2 section it is 5, and in Book3 section it is 4.
It automatically generates all the content and works out the numerical tabs based on the number of products and the variable value dynamically.

Feedback welcomed.

[Duncan Rounding]

Looks good but how do the SEs view hidden text? Would they perhaps see it as some black hat techniques?

[leehack]

Initial thoughts is this could be powerful. My only reservation is the numbers 1-4 or 5-9 do not really mean anything or indeed help if people are browsing. Where i do think this could be really really good is on alphabetical listings or numeric part numbers into grouped.

I think what people have to click on and choose is very important that it means something.

[fergusw]

Good points made already.

Re: SE Black Hat - Norman made a suggestion about his product content tabs and the fact that the content is loaded first, with javascript then hiding relevant content on page load - see here

Lee, The 1-4, 5-9 etc lists are just an example that are dymanically created to reflect a common search page navigation. It could quite easily be page 1, page 2 etc.

I'll wait and see if it would be worthwhile scooping this into a partial snapshot for the community.

[TraceyHand]

I'll wait and see if it would be worthwhile scooping this into a partial snapshot for the community.

It'd interest me.
My BB site isn't really suited (in the majority of areas) to single product pages and some listing pages can get quite long.

[leehack]

I see it working well on a page like this.

[RuralWeb]

I like it and its the way many of the big boys operate. Problems I see are that as Duncan says you will need to check that the SEs like it and I think it would work well for listings pages that are duplicates linking to single product pages eg http://www.ukcheaptoners.co.uk/acata...artridges.html

[dscontroller]

Hi Fergus,

I can certainly seem some mileage in this if the SE's view it OK. We all get presented sometimes with hellish long pages and loads of products!

Regards,
David

[george]

Good idea... if the SE's like it.

If you have ten products starting with most letters if the alphabet then have thirty beginning with say, S, its a bit naff to have sections called S (1), S (2) & S (3).

Aye, get this developed further laddie.


*declines offer of guinea pig outfit*

[fergusw]

Good points, well made - apart from yours George, obviously

The benefit of the way we have made this tabbing work is that the user can simply enter a number at the section level and the products automatically are split into the relevant tabs.
Using this method to display with text based tabs, or alphabetically ordered tabs would introduce another layer of complexity and user input, however it could be done
e.g. have a variable where the tab headings are entered in a comma delimited list e.g. "Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, etc etc" or "A-G,H-P, etc etc" and then the script could figure out how many pages you need by the number of items in the comma delimeted list?

[Rushal]

Hi Fergus

You wouldn't be referring to the change we requested with Nicola the other day would you? LOL!

You could of course be talking about something completely different but if you interested, then visit:

http://www.econo-med.com/acatalog/ME...ANCE_SHOP.html

you will see it in action as we already use it. Ok, its a very basic way of doing it, but it works for us.

Just found it funny how we asked for this to be included in our design, and here you are asking about it on here.

[Design2Please]

I like the look of this too and would certainly be useful for sections on my site where I have a large number of products.

[RuralWeb]

I like the look of this

Yes but it trashes your SEO

[Design2Please]

Yes but it trashes your SEO

Hi Malcolm,

Do you know whether this is definately the case now as agree it would not be good if it damages SEO, but if it doesn't then I could see it being very useful for my site.

it could be seenFrom reading the posts I had seen there were concerns that the SE's might not like it but hadn't seen any posts to say that someone had seen this to be the case yet.

Fergus - Have you noticed any negative impacts with the SE's?

Kind Regards

[RuralWeb]

definately the case

You can tell by just looking at the page in the example- see who can spot it first.