The type you need will largely depend on how big your product universe is: static tables are used for small (under 5 items) product universes and dynamic tables are appropriate when your product universe contains many items. Some comparison tables are static - they contain preselected products others are dynamic and allow users to decide which items they want to compare. Pretty much any time your users want to choose among similar offerings, especially if multiple factors contribute to the decision, it’s an opportunity for a comparison table. Outside those exceptions, a comparison table’s applications are limited only by your imagination. For example, it’d be hard to come up with a set of attributes to compare works of art. The product or service is unique and hard to compare with others.The product or service is cheap or easily replaceable (e.g., a pen, paper towels) and users are likely to engage in satisficing behavior and not spend much time analyzing alternatives.
Someone shopping for a coffee mug online might be interested in the style (and possibly size) but probably won’t want to compare many attributes of several coffee mugs. For example, a coffee mug doesn’t have many meaningful, comparable attributes. The product or service is simple, and users wouldn’t be interested in analyzing the characteristics.For example, unlike a microwave or a laptop, consumers are unlikely to purchase only one shirt, so Zara doesn’t need to put together a comparison table to let users see several shirts side by side. Similar items are not necessarily mutually exclusive.In addition to the noncompensatory decision situation discussed above, you probably don’t need a comparison table if: There are certainly cases when a comparison table is unnecessary. They allow users to easily see and compare multiple important attributes at a glance. In contrast, compensatory decision making is best served by comparison tables. For example, a user researching a new laptop might be willing to consider a heavier computer if it has better battery life and computing power.įilters and facets support noncompensatory decision making. People might accept a negative attribute as a tradeoff for a positive one. When people have to select among a small set of alternatives (usually under 5–7), they usually engage in compensatory decision making: they look at the individual merits of each and compare their advantages and disadvantages according to a number of criteria. This nonnegotiable filter helps the user restrict the set of results to a reasonable size.
For example, a user looking to buy a new car might filter out all the cars that are more expensive than that $20,000, even though some of them may be surpassing the budget by a very small amount. To narrow down the number of alternatives to a manageable one, they usually use one hard criterion that outweighs any other considerations. When people have to choose among many alternatives, it’s hard to compare the pros and cons of each individual alternative, and as a result they engage in noncompensatory decision making. To understand when you should use a comparison table, you have to first consider how people make decisions. The comparison table is a much more versatile tool than it gets credit for. They can be used to compare similar items from the same organization, or to compare one organization’s products against those of a competitor.
#PROS CONS OF VISUAL VS TABULAR DATA SOFTWARE#
But comparison tables are equally well-suited to services, membership levels, pricing packages, software features, tuition rates, or locations. It’s true that the most common instances of comparison tables are for mid-range to expensive consumer goods, especially electronics (think microwaves, fitness trackers, vacuum cleaners, or cars). : A typical product-comparison table When You Need a Comparison TableĬomparison tables are often misunderstood as tools for ecommerce only.
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