Just allow me to filter your entire stock list by size. No one does this.<p>"OMG, this shirt is awesome" followed by "Damn it, it's out of stock", after opening it and has M (Medium) greyed out.<p>Disappointment pattern, I call it.
Using dropdowns instead of radio buttons is a huge pet peeve of mine.<p>Dropdowns are only appropriate if the quantity of choices is large and the user already knows what the choices are, and then you should be able to type your selection in. This would be things like birth year, country, and state/province.<p>Otherwise you add extra clicks, extra scrolling, and visual search of a brand-new element that can't be evaluated ahead of time.
I'm very unlikely to buy a size that won't fit me or my immediate family members. But somehow, no clothing shop seems to allow you to set up a couple of profiles (women's clothing size M, men's clothing size L) and filter the entire catalogue by default.<p>I'm reminded of the highstreet, where I've only found one shop that sorts clothes on the rack based on size. I suppose this is to encourage browsing and inquiring if your size is 'in the back', but it's excrutiatingly inefficient.
Why does the site need access to my VR headset?<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/Tg5G6Ma.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/Tg5G6Ma.png</a>
All of the "bad" examples shown have common issues that are ignored by this article. They use inconsistent styles for their fields (particularly when mixing buttons and dropdowns). They also do not group all fields together as one form. Instead, the size field is presented in some other part of the page, making it difficult for users to navigate through the form.<p>Meanwhile, the "good" examples all use consistent styles for the fields and group all fields together in the same part of the page.<p>Dropdowns might be part of the problem, but considering the examples given in this article, I think that problem is being significantly overstated. I would caution against forming any general opinions about dropdowns from just this article.
Sizes in online clothing shops should be global persistent settings. If I am shoe size 10, no part of the site should ever show me anything that isn't available in that size.<p>You could use checkboxes to enable searching for more than one size at the same time, e.g. it might be useful for searching for clothes for my kids, or if I know that I can usually fit more than one size because I'm on the border between 2.
> <i>However, some sites have a default preselected size for products — for example, a 39 x 27 inch poster size selected by default — which enables users to add a product to the cart without reviewing and selecting the size option at all on the product page. During our eye-tracking study, we observed that several users at AllPosters never even looked at the size drop-down, instead going with whatever size was the default.</i><p>Sorta have to question now whether such usability studies show real behavior of people. Because I can't conceive of someone buying a poster and never thinking whether it would fit in the space on the wall. At least if the person isn't drunk.
This is assuming that whatever you're selling the customer only wants one size, which would be the case for clothing but not for all things.<p>One case would be lengths of cables or different weights of barbell plates, there the customer would want to buy several of different sizes. In that case all sizes should be visible with inputs for the desired quantities.
Pretty good research on the same topic from this firm a few years ago: <a href="https://baymard.com/blog/drop-down-usability" rel="nofollow">https://baymard.com/blog/drop-down-usability</a>
I tried buying a jacket online. Was a little confused when I pressed a L button and it did not register. Took me a while that they sold out of that size. Not that I think about it, not really sure how to best handle that UI situation.
Dropdowns/selects/menus are the standard way to chicken out of designing proper UIs. Unless you have dozens of choices, you can probably do better than a dropdown.