Refreshing page-level navigation

My involvement

• UX Writer at Dell

• April 2023

Problem

• "Product Details" was not representative of its content and wasn't differentiated enough from "Tech Specs." This section was actually marketing content highlighting certain features about the product.

• "Drivers, Manuals & Support" could be more concise (and was missing an Oxford comma). This section of the page was also just a button that took users to the main Dell.com support page where they could then search for drivers and product manuals.

My process

Evaluate existing labels

I kept 3 out of the 5 labels the same:

• "Customization" is user-centric, unlike something like "configuration."

• "Tech Specs" are industry-standard and something customer shopping for a computer are looking for.

• "Reviews" is common for e-commerce UI and, again, something customers are looking for.

"Product Details" and "Drivers, Manuals & Support" had some room for improvement.

The "Product Details" section isn't "details" about the product so much as it is a highlight reel of certain features. And the entirety of the "Drivers, Manuals & Support" section just included a button to the main support page. Calling out drivers and manuals on the product details page seemed helpful because it implied that customers with this product could come here to find those product-specific resources.

Based on this, I proposed testing "Features" instead of "Product Details" and "Support" instead of "Drivers, Manuals & Support."

Learning users' preferences on proposed labels

In our first round of testing, we showed 20 participants the section the label pertained and provided multiple labels, asking them to select the one they preferred most.

"Support" was the clear winner, but "Product Details emerged ahead of other options:

• Product Details - 7

• Key Features - 6

• Features - 3

• Overview - 2

• About the Item - 2

I was surprised because this section does not include a comprehensive list of product details, but rather a highlight reel of features. Nonetheless, based on these test results, I had to change my approach to “Product Details.”

As with all projects, this was a lesson in balancing being clear with being concise and succinct. In my second version, I proposed removing “Product” and just using “Details,” as all content on the page refers to the product, but “Details” wasn’t representative of the section. In talking with the design team about this, we decided to run another test but give users more context on the presented section and asking them to choose between “Details” and “Features.” With this additional context and the removal of the word “Product,” the results came out overwhelmingly in favor of “Features.”

Outcome

"Product Details” became “Features,” which better prepared users for what to expect in the section and reduced the character count from 15 to 8 characters.

The big win was changing the verbose, 27-character “Drivers, Manuals & Support” to a simple, 7-character “Support.”

These changes better reflect the what users actually see and can expect from Dell's product details pages.