bradleytaunt
commented
5 years ago After reading through @ryanprior's detailed write-up, I decided to play around with the concept of displaying more information "above the fold" on both desktop and mobile.
Below you can find some rough concepts of a possible redesigned app page for the Spice-Up elementary app. The page now shows the user:
- App Icon
- App Name
- App description (tagline)
- Author name
- Price
- Install / Download CTA
- Screenshot slider
Desktop
Mobile
This rough idea is more of a jumping-off point for others interested in tackling this issue.
ryanprior
Here's the top of an app detail page. On many wide screens this is about all you'll see without scrolling, "above the fold":
To list, in order of most-visually-prominent to least: 1) a (part of a) screenshot of the app 2) a call to action asking me to install Elementary OS (see #43 for my separate criticism of this CTA) 3) the application's name, author, and icon
Everybody's probably got their own wishlist of what they think the most important information is when they're visiting an app detail page, but the bottom line is that the current page doesn't give you much info at all above the fold, and the visual hierarchy of that info isn't very helpful either.
As an example, here's my own personal wishlist of what I want to know most when I visit an app detail page, roughly in order of most important to least:
I don't think it would be unreasonable to put all these things above the fold. For this particular app, the answers are all short and punchy:
Of those six things, only two are definitively answered, while two more have half-answers (a partial screenshot and whatever I can infer from that about the intended use of the app.)
A little table with that data could fit comfortably within a single screen, even on mobile. For comparison, an app detail page in the Android Play Store contains this info above the fold, without looking cramped:
I'm certainly not suggesting we should copy or take cues from Google's play store design- the context is totally different, the audience is different, etc. But the comparison shows it's possible to put enough information on the first screen you see of an application's detail page that you can assess what's on offer without excessive visual clutter.