of  all  of  the  displayed  businesses,  thus  dramatically  cutting  down  on  clicking  and 

scrolling. The trick is knowing approximately what the user is looking for and, based on 

that,  displaying  a  general  form  appropriate  to  the  business  type.  The  list  of  related 

categories  sorted  in  order  of  number  of  occurrences  are  a  good  way  to  select  which 

 smart  form   to  display.  Almost  every  business  category  would  have  a  certain  type  of 

basic  form  corresponding  to  it.  In  the  case  of  a  computer  retailer,  every  product  is 

guaranteed to at least be defineable by its description, make, model and price. The same 

goes for a used car dealer, a shoe shop, a bicycle shop etc. This generic product form can 

be  used  on  most  retail  categories.  However,  should  a  particular  category  of  business 

require a more specialised form, it would be a simple matter to design a new form for it. 

Examples  include  bookshops,  estate  agents  and  pizza  delivery  firms.  A  bookshop  form 

would most likely have fields for Author, Title, Publisher and Year; an estate agent might 

have Property type (a select list with values like  plot ,  detached ,  semi ,  bungalow , 

 office  etc), Location and Price. Pizza forms can have Base, Topping 1, Topping 2 and 

Topping 3, and a search would return every pizza offered by every pizza company within 

the  specified  area  which  has  a  deep pan  base  and  contains  pepperoni,  anchovies  and 

olives! With call out services such as doctors, electricians and plumbers, the emphasis is 

more on availability, so a typical catch all form for them would revolve around times. 

In all of the above cases, it would still be possible to carry out more refined queries on 

the  subsequent  page,  where  a  fuller  range  of  possible  product  attributes  would  be 

presented 

3.6 Summary 

This system is designed to offer a rich source of information to the user about products 

and services available in their area. With just a few mouse clicks, users are connected to 

businesses not just by arbitrarily picking a name from a list, but because the user knows 

that that business offers the exact product or service that he or she needs, at the right price 

and at the right time. Browsing the Golden Pages need no longer be a hit and miss affair. 

26