New Website: Left column

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1) The website needs to remember what I do in the left column. It is very annoying to collapse a number of the upper headings and expand one of the lower ones, so that I can see what I want without having to scroll down (virtually all my web browsing starts with cmd-+++) -- and then having to do it all over again as soon as I switch page. And it's even more annoying having to redo it when I go back to the same page.

2) The website also needs to remember how many results I want on the page. I don't want to have to switch 15 to 60 a dozen times a day. (And 15 is far too little when you have a slow connection; you end up spending more time waiting than reading.)

3) I don't know about others, but personally I think it was a bad idea to move prepubs and CP so far down the column: a) because I personally check them far more often than I go looking for a particular author or type, and b) because I fear even fewer people will notice that they exist at all.

4) a) If I go to Specials > [one of the options], and then want to go on to check out another line under Specials, I can't. There are no Specials in the left column of that page. I have to click my way back several pages before I can find it again.

    b) The same goes for Pre-Pub Status: if I use the left column to go to one of the subdivisions, I first have to go back again before I can go to another.

    c) I haven't checked them all out, but this seems to be an overall problem. 

5) The default sorting seems confused:

• If I go to Specials>New, I probably want the newest first. 
• If I go to Specials>Last Chance, I probably want the book shipping first to be on top, and not hidden somewhere further down, maybe even on another page, where I might miss it. 
• If I go to Shipping Soon, Under Development, or Gathering Interest I probably want them sorted by Shipdate or Progress (which I take to be the same thing with different names?). (If the most recently added prepubs are indeed what I want to see, then I wouldn't go to these pages, since that would require me to check all three before I could be sure to have seen all recent additions. Instead I would go to a page showing all prepubs, regardless of status.)

6) Which leads to the problem: how do I do that? If this website had followed Mac standards, it would have been easy: I would simply have clicked the Pre-Pub heading. But since it follows stupid Windows standards, that just collapses the section (for those who don't know: in Mac you do that by clicking the arrow). To get all prepubs on one page I instead have to go up to the top and choose Products > Pre-Publication Specials. If you come from the Home Page and are working your way downwards that is easy and intuitive; if you are already on e g the Shipping Soon page, and want to go just a little bit upwards, it is rather unintuitive. Once you have left the top and started to use a left column, you kind of expect to be able to do all your navigation from there, until you need a completely different section, like Support.

 

Summary: this website requires me to use at least 10-20 times more clicks than should be necessary. Since that clicking is done with the right index finger, and since my right index finger already has an inflammation, caused by the Logos software, I do not appreciate all this extra stress on it. It hurts, and it increases the inflammation.