05 Feb 2004 | Mike said...

Yup.

06 Feb 2004 | daniel harvey said...

Shame the first three options I ran through at random all resulted in a null return. There's such a thing as too powerful.

06 Feb 2004 | Adam said...

I really don't have trouble finding clothes at Gap or REI or wherever, but if a site is selling that many types of clothes it's good they have a smart search design.

06 Feb 2004 | Houser said...

I work for a company that farms data for the pharma industry and I've put a lot of these types of filters on some of our more complicated data screens. Really helps our customers hone down to the information they really need.

06 Feb 2004 | Michael Spina said...

Yes! Eliminating choices will make shopping much easier. As an example, electronics/computer online stores provide way too many irrelevant results, and I spend more time weeding through them, finding what I need, and losing it again than I do actually comparing items I'm interested in. When I see 9 pages of results for a search for "Firewire cable" I tend to be turned off, and just go to a retail store with higher prices.

Also, most online stores seem to filter by brand and price only, and don't add enough filters based on the category I'm currently viewing. I.E. monitors may show size and type dropdowns. Or for cables, connection types or length.

06 Feb 2004 | Paul said...

Curious if that would be useful on this site.

06 Feb 2004 | pek said...

Damn Paul! A little warning next time. That hurt my head.

06 Feb 2004 | TL said...

Wolfgang's Vault has a similar feature for concert posters... "To fine-tune your search, please make selections from the drop-down filters below." ... but doesn't support combinations.

Personally though, if you're going to do faceted classification, I'd rather see a more scannable presentation.

For example, the one on my site. It admittedly has some implementation problems (and is woefully incomplete) but is more easily scanned and doesn't require as much fine motor skill as pulldowns.

10 Feb 2004 | inmobiliarias madrid said...

interesting

18 Feb 2004 | Don Schenck said...

Our search engine works by multiple drop downs.

It's here.

Finally ... that shirt ... boy, do I remember those days ... my "silk" shirts ... my purple bell bottom jeans ... wide white belt ... and blue and white suede platform shoes.

Drove a Pinto.