
Good UX in the Wild: Dropbox's attention to detail on their download page - joeyespo
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/GoodUXInTheWildDropboxsAttentionToDetailOnTheirDownloadPage.aspx
======
patio11
_Techies forget how something as trivial as downloading and running a file can
be a huge deal for the average user._

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

I actually wanted to hire someone to do this for BCC but shot the downloadable
version of the product in the head instead, which largely solved this problem.

Another example:

<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/instructions.htm>

This page was written back in ~2006. It has probably consumed five hours of my
life since then, answering just one particular query. The customer complaint
was "I can't find the Purchase Now! menu that you tell me to click on." Guess
why.

ROT13:

Ba znpf gur zrah one vf ng gur gbc bs gur fperra, abg va gur nccyvpngvba
jvaqbj, yvxr vg vf va fperrafubgf bs Jvaqbjf nccyvpngvbaf. Znal crbcyr pnaabg
nofgenpgyl ernfba gung vs gurl ner ybbxvat sbe n zrah one naq zrah onef ner ba
gur gbc bs gur fperra va znpf gura gur guvat gurl ner ybbxvat sbe fubhyq or ng
gur gbc bs gur fperra. Gurl nyfb ebhgvaryl qb abg haqrefgnaq gung rvgure n)
gurl ner ybbxvat ng n Jvaqbjf nccyvpngvba (lbh qb, ohg lbh'er sernxvfu va lbhe
novyvgl gb haqrefgnaq gung gur pbafvfgrag HV thvqryvarf tvir lbh vzcbegnag
uvagf yvxr gur jvaqbj pbageby ohggbaf) be o) Jvaqbjf naq Znpf ner abg gur fnzr
be p) Jvaqbjf naq Znpf _rkvfg_.

~~~
bodegajed
One thing I noticed about your page is that its SEO optimized -- with the
"Bingo Card" keyword to be exact -- rather than being user friendly. I think
this is also another dilemma we are facing. We can put nice graphics with less
text to our landing pages which will be very user friendly but it would also
suffer lower SERP because of low keyword recurrence.

~~~
patio11
Kinda tangential, but since I want to help people do better at SEO: That page
is not SEO optimized -- it isn't even designed to be accessible to crawlers.
It is only linked to from post-purchase emails and me when answering customer
support requests. No page on my site other than the front page would ever rank
for [bingo cards], certainly not on the strength of on-page optimizations.

If a consulting client told me they were worried about poor rankings because
of low keyword recurrence on their landing pages I'd tell them that on-page
factors wouldn't make a difference for head-of-the-distribution terms either
way and you don't need _re_ -occurrence to rank for tail terms, so that is
probably not a terribly big worry. Having insufficient text on a page to rank
for anything is a bit of a worry. If you're trying to satisfy the competing
imperatives "Conversion rate/user happiness goes up when we take text off" and
"Rankings go up when we add text" the solution I'd recommend pretty quickly is
"Put the text below the fold, where only Googlebot and the sliver of humans
who actually enjoy reading will see it."

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OpenAmazing
I did almost exactly the same thing on one of my websites (screenshots showing
the user what to click on to complete the download).

I started getting customer support requests complaining that the "Download
window could not be clicked on and was stuck to the web page".

Turns out users thought that the explanatory screenshots were the ACTUAL
download dialogs and they were trying to click the images in the web page.
Oops.

Turns out I needed to resize the screenshots and discolor them slightly so it
was obvious they were the REAL buttons to click.

Lesson learned.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Wow. That's really something.

I guess Dropbox users are probably on average a _little_ bit more
knowledgeable about how browsers work than that... I hope.

~~~
OpenAmazing
You would be surprised.

If you distribute software to non-programmers, check your stats for # of
downloads started vs. # of applications started (or new users). My guess is
that they are way off:

Most computer users do not know what a "Downloads" folder is.

~~~
kogir
On Windows the solution for this is ClickOnce[1]. It's actually really well
done, but I've only ever seen one program use it - Chrome[2].

[1] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/t71a733d(v=VS.100).a...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/t71a733d\(v=VS.100\).aspx) [2] <https://www.google.com/chrome>

~~~
motowilliams
I don't think Google Chromium (Chrome) uses the .NET ClickOnce installer but
Google's own Omaha software installer

~~~
ComputerGuru
He's referring to a special launcher for the installer that's used on Windows.

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teye
This has been done for a long time on many sites. The Firefox download is one
that comes to mind.

I see this as more of a no-brainer for a software download than a standout
example of brilliant UX.

~~~
switz
UX isn't about who did what first. It's about doing what makes sense for the
user, then reapplying it in every scenario that works. Pull to refresh on the
iPhone was utter genius and everyone adopted it. No one is saying, "Well
Tweetie did that first!"

Also, it seems like a "no brainer" now, but during the development it's easy
for these _no brainer_ things to either be ignored or written off as a waste
of valuable engineering time.

~~~
shanselman
Well said. I wasn't trying to say DropBox is the only or the first. They had
the will and attention to detail that so so many sites don't.

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waitwhat
Sadly, their "attention to detail on their download page" doesn't extend to
the actual screenshots on that page: they reference Dropbox.exe (which is
incorrect -- the downloaded filename actually includes a version number), and
sometimes Dropbox 0.7.110.exe (which is worse, because although it does
include a version number, that version is a couple of years out-of-date by
this stage.)

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andrewjshults
Another site that does a great job of paying attention to the details in the
signup process is rdio. They parse out the domain of major webmail providers
and give you a link to sign in page so that you can quickly jump in and
complete the reg process.
[https://twitter.com/#!/andrewjshults/status/1404921933695631...](https://twitter.com/#!/andrewjshults/status/140492193369563136/photo/1)

~~~
murki
Facebook also does that.

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jcapote
Yet you need to download an app to hide their menu bar icon:
<http://dropboxwiki.com/MacDropHide>

~~~
ceejayoz
Downloading Dropbox is a common use case. Wanting to hide the tiny icon in the
menu bar is a rare use case.

------
younata
_Techies forget how something as trivial as downloading and running a file can
be a huge deal for the average user._

I learned today that one of my friends (up until this past summer) thought
that the internet was something on her computer.

I hold this person in high regard as one of the most intelligent people I
know, she just doesn't know computers.

------
rottencupcakes
As great as this example is, I generally live in fear of browser-specific
behavior.

In the best case, it solves the niggling inconvenience of having to click on
the correct browser extension to install.

In the worst (and far more prevalent case), poorly coded browser-specific
behavior stops me from accessing websites at all if my user-agent doesn't
match something on the server's limited whitelist, or nags me continuously to
download a "modern" browser while I am, in fact, running the latest build of
Chrome or Firefox, simply due to a poorly configured regex.

~~~
nknight
The biggest useragent problem I have these days is clicking a link to a
specific article on some site with my phone, and getting redirected to the
front page of their totally separate mobile site, left with no way to find the
article I was trying to read.

The second biggest problem is actually with software like Dropbox that's
cross-platform, and the download page automatically chooses the version I
want. _Dropbox itself actually gets this right_ , by presenting small links to
each specific platform right under the main download button, but I'm always
running into sites that make it hard or impossible to get at a specific
platform's version different from the one identified in my useragent string.

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udp
I notice that in the Windows dialogs, the _wrong_ button is often highlighted
- for example, _No_ is highlighted in "Do you want to allow changes", and
_Cancel_ is highlighted in the Firefox "Opening" dialog.

Maybe it'd be better to highlight the correct option for people who don't
bother to read the text?

