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I'm trying to give customers succinct directions to an industry-standards site where they can see which of our products have achieved a certification.
It turns out to be a little more involved than one might expect (curses upon certain unnamed website designers...).
If you could look at the Payment Card Industry site, and in particular this page:
That page shows lists of evaluated products, by company.
Unfortunately, the list that appears by default is not the one we are interested in.
If you are browsing on a PC, then across the top of the page is a set of tabs, with the tab "Approved Companies and Providers" highlighted... so, you are here...
Now (bear with me...) about halfway down the page is a row of .... um.... items, on a turquoise background. They are:
PIN Acceptance Devices | Non PED | HSM | SCR |
By default, you land on the first one, so the list below it (all 630 items spread over 32 pages...) is NOT the list you want.
If you are me, or one of our customers, you are interested in HSMs. When you click "HSM" in that row of ____ the list is now the much shorter list of evaluated HSM devices. Yay!
So, my question is, by way of physical/visual reference, what to call the row of names (PIN Acceptance Devices, Non PED, HSM, and SCR) ??
There are already what I would call "tabs" across the top of the page, and a ton more down the side.
So I don't want to call them "tabs".
IMMEDIATELY below the items of interest, are what I would naturally call "headings" for the table of devices.
So, I don't want to call the selection row "headings" when they are half an inch above a row of ... well... "headings".
What's another, better word?
How would you direct a customer to the HSM thingie, so that they see the correct list, given that it doesn't seem possible to give them a link that goes all the way in?
Keep in mind that they could be viewing on any size screen from a smartphone to a wall-size display, so the desired tab/heading/thingie row might be high or low on the page that they see.... or might be below the fold when they arrive (small screens...). So relative geographical language probably won't work well.
Color is not a good reference if any of my audience is color-blind. I think turqoise comes out brown-ish to most color-deficient men?
Granted, they could just use the search box and search our company name, since currently we don't provide products from the other categories. But the search shows just the hits for the keyword that the visitor provides... it does NOT simply jump to the correct location in the desired list. That could be good if we didn't want customers to see that we have competition. It could be bad if want them to see who we are ... ahem... better than.... ahem. :-)
Your thoughts?
I mean, given how almost every item on that page changes color/state when a mouse passes over it, I did not immediately realize that the row of thingies was active and was what I was seeking. Perhaps all our customers are quicker on the uptake than I am, but do I want to count on that?
I actually find the LOOK of that PCI page appealing. It's the functionality that gives me pain.
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