Travis Winn Analyzes/Makes Suggestions For UI Improvements at Shopfiy

Technology is so crazy sometimes I have been coming to realize that we always do so much then forget how we did it, that’s why I have been blogging things like how to network a Mac and PC or hack an iPhone without WiFi or things like that because usually after you do it once, you forget!

Hi Shopify Team,

I like the new way of products listing and inventory. I think it is more elegant than it was before.

From a usability perspective there is one bug, or so it seems to me. I also have a UI idea or two.

The bug seems to be, if you have more than 50 items, select, inventory view, then sort by inventory number and then go to page two of the list, the second page is no longer in order by inventory number.

Also some logic for inventory number sorting would be nice. My clients gave me inventory numbers D1, D2, D3…D10,D11…

So when I sort by Inv. # currently I get the D1, then D11, then D12, …D2, D20, D21… I know that’s a lot to ask, but it’s an idea for a future upgrade, the image that I attach, in my opinion could provide the most helpfuly user interface upgrades and from a programming perspective shouldn’t be that difficult to incorporate, please look at and forward, thanks so much.

Best regards,

Travis

P.S. Here’s a text summary of what I put with graphics and suggested UI element additions for easier and more powerful viewing of inventory and products:

1. To the uninitiated, it is not obvious that if you click one of the buttons a list of commands are going to pop up and allow you to create actions. Therefore, in my opinion, from a UI perspective you should put the directions here essentially similar to what I have typed. There is also a bug in I.E. 8 on Vista SP2 where the Pop Up CSS is misaligned. I recommend that on the top left corner you put the following text above the Check Box All:

Make a selection to publish, hide, or delete item(s).
Or you can add your item(s) to a collection. The top box selects all.

2. It would be very convenient to have a column here that showed what collections your items are already in. Especially considering that one of the main functionalities of this page is that you can add your titems to collections (as well as publish, delete and hide).

Collections Column to the right of inventory and to the left of Total

3. Instead of mouseover for SKU # perhaps you should put the sku number where everyone can see it in one glance, much more useful and there seems to be room for this in the inventory column under the inventory amount listed.

4. Currently if you have more than 50 items, it goes to a new page. Having the option to have all items on one page is very desirable. Also, there is a bug if you are in inventory view and then sort by SKU and then hit “Page 2″ the items on the second page are no longer in order by SKU number. This would be solved by having this list. It would also be convenient for clients that just want to print their inventory list to check physical inv. manually and reorder. Most people track by inventory number, even under list view an inventory number available would help Shopify clients manage and run their stores.

I recommend putting the following to the right of the list view: Items Per Page: 50 100 200 300 500 with 50 as the default but options for more.

That’s all for now, but please take a look at the attachment to see a graphical representation including added graphics showing exactly what would go where.