One column of products, or two?

[alltopbooks]

Hi again all

I'm trying to find out which is better for www.alltopbooks.com (http://www.alltopbooks.com). At the moment, we show 10 books per page in each category, with a description for each. This gives an idea what the book is about, but means you have to scroll down to see all 10.

As an alternative, we could have two columns of 5 books. This would have the book title, price and picture only on the category page, and you would need to click through to read any description.

Do you have any personal preference? Or if you have experience in these things as a web designer or similar, do you think one method has a better conversion than the other?

I'm running a little survey among my Twitter followers, but as you've always been a very clued in crowd I wanted to give you the chance to win a Sunday Times bestseller rather than giving advice for no reward. So if you want a chance to win before you answer, take the 7 question survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DXDV9LX.

Thank you for any help you can offer, and good luck if you take the survey to enter the comp (closes Saturday 27th 12AM)

Cheers

Dilip

[gemd89]

I like it the way it is...would probably be 2 cluttered with 2 columns

Gemma

[J-Wholesale]

As your site doesn't have a fixed width, it really depends on the screen size of your customers. On a 1600 width screen, 2 columns would work very well, on a more typical 1280 width, 2 columns would be crowded. Check your site stats to see what screen dimensions are most commonly used by your customers, and test the site yourself under those conditions.

[Milan Vasilko]

Hi Dilip

Only three thoughts on this one:

1. It does not really matter what anyone here thinks (including me), you could try both options in a spit test with your real website visitors and measure conversion. That way you directly measure which option is better for your site as everything else is just an opinion which you cannot really rely on.

2. I'd look at what Amazon does, you can be sure they invest heavily in usability testing on these kind of things.

3. Who cares about the columns?!

What I am interested in is:
- Can I find what I am looking for quickly and easily?
- Is the total price better than what I would pay on Amazon?
- (only if I am in a hurry) Can I get the product delivered quickly?
- Can I trust you enough to buy from you and hope to receive the product in a perfect condition?
- Is there enough product info to give me confidence that I am really buying what I want (and not some older/different edition or variation of the book)?
- How easy is it to return the product if I ever have to?

I hope this helps,
Milan

[alltopbooks]

Thanks to all of you who have responded so far...some very helpful stuff in there. :-)

Dilip

[imageonline]

I also think it looks best as it is. The text is very small. You can drive yourself nuts worrying about the simple things. Price and service are what you need to concentrate on. Good luck.