3.4 Filtering and sorting the results 

When a user is presented with a large amount of tabular data of varying relevance, it is 

important that they be allowed to filter and arrange this data as easily and intuitively as 

possible. To that end, several options are presented. 

3.4.1 Categories 

The  print  edition  of  the  Golden Pages divides up its listed businesses by category. The 

categories are arranged alphabetically, much like the entries in a dictionary, thus allowing 

the  user  to  quickly  flip  through  and  locate  all  of  the  businesses  related  to  a  particular 

category  of  products  or  services.  There  are,  however,  many  categories  pertaining  to 

computers, for example. Some businesses will specialise only in selling computers, others 

in computer maintenance and repair and others in computer training. Web design firms, 

networking specialists and the like also fall into the sphere of  computers . These each 

get a category to themselves, so it may not always be clear on opening the print edition 

exactly  which  category  one  should  be  looking  out  for.  This  problem  is  alleviated 

somewhat with an index of all of the categories, located towards the end of the book, in 

which all of the possible subcategories of computer related businesses are listed side by 

side.  

An  online  version  has  two  ways  of  reproducing  this.  The  first  way  is  to  provide  a 

directory section, which lists all of the businesses and provides links to simple listings of 

all of the businesses in that category, with possible further targetted searches within that 

to narrow down the list of businesses.  

A more convenient way is to show the user those categories most closely related to their 

search  query  in  a  separate  panel  on  the  results  page.  Thus,  a  search  for  computers  in  a 

specific area will show, as well as the appropriate business listing, all of the computer 

related  categories,  such  as  Computer  Software,  Computer  Maintenance,  Computer 

Training, Web design and so on. 

3.4.1.1 Note: The single page principle 

Any web service offering some sort of search functionality will invariably have to deal 

with the prospect of a large number of search results being returned to one page. Perhaps 

because of bandwidth issues and loading times in the past, most designers consider the 

most appropriate method of displaying this large amount of data to be to split the results 

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