My Listia, Take 2

Last Friday we pushed out a large change to the ‘Home’ and ‘Account’ pages, effectively merging them into a single new ‘My Account’ page.  In an effort to simplify the user experience and make navigating around Listia easier, we managed to elicit a whole range of feedback from our users.  Some users had the type of reaction we anticipated:

Being able to go to my messages with a quick click on the left. That’s a good addition. The whole bar on the left is good. 

Others didn’t feel quite the same:

I don’t care about anything EXCEPT what I’m dealing with, so I expect to only see what I’m dealing with when I click on MY listia.

Others still had mixed feelings:

I personally like the new setup for our account page. However, it does seem to be a little busy!

We received a TON of feedback (Thank you everyone who chimed in!), and read through every single post to understand the whole range of concerns.  We realized that those who liked the changes enjoyed the (1) increased navigability and (2) ability to explore new and interesting auctions from the same page.  Those who disliked it felt that the explore content was (3) impersonal and irrelevant, and more importantly (4) affected their ability to focus on and use the account pages.

We couldn’t agree more with these points. Today we’re rolling out a few changes that aim to keep the benefits provided by the ‘My Account’ page, but at the same time increase focus on the usability of the account features.  Some things to note about the changes:

We’ve removed the alternating pane showcasing featured auctions
The content wasn’t relevant enough to justify taking up such prime real estate on users’ browsers.

In its place you’ll find a condensed summary of recent auction activity
While the left menu provides an exhaustive view of your account, this lets people quickly see what’s going on and move on to the next task.

Explore content and auctions from people you’re a fan of are still shown
From the ‘My Account’ page you’re still able to check out interesting content from fans and others alike.

The open/closed state of the menu is saved across pages
To reduce clutter and keep the menu as tidy as possible, if you close a menu it will remain closed on the next page.

Our goal is to strike an ideal balance between account management and auction discovery, two things that we feel go hand in hand in creating a great Listia experience.

We hope everyone finds the changes helpful!

photo via Chuckumentary