Why are filters on the left side of the webpage ?

By Hardik Khanna on April 20, 2012 7 Comments / 2786 views

I have a query regarding web designing , which goes like this:

On websites why are filters provided ( e.g.in linkedin ) on the left side of the webpage ?

From my personal observation/usage I have seen that generally the cursor is always on the right side of the screen , which is probably because I am a right handed person and majority of users are .

The other reason for this is also that the vertical scroll bar lies on the right end of the screen.

Whenever I try changing filters , I have to move the cursor on the left side of the page.

This is not a good experience , since each time I need to change filters I have to swipe my finger on the

mouse-pad on my laptop , which is not a good experience.

This becomes even more annoying on an e-commerce website.

Can someone please provide with some insights on this.

Please note: My designer friends gave me some insights on the ‘Z’ and ‘F’ layout of webpages. My thought is , it wouldn’t matter by shifting the filters on the left side of the webpage.Your thought…

Comments

Hardik Khanna

7 Comments

Abey John April 27, 2012, 4:51 pm

The best way to answer it Hardik is to run an A/B test using something like Google Website Optimizer. Have a different version of the page with the filters on the right. But you want to link it to some conversion goal. Sure, from a usability PoV it may make sense to have the filters on the right. The next question is what disappears or gets swapped out to somewhere else on the site. And what is the impact of that change on your site’s conversion goals.

By looking at the page from the PoV of conversion you short circuit a lot of your decision making agony over widget placement. Maybe your goal is for the visitor to spend more time on the site. Maybe it is to improve the checkout process.

Once you tie your user activity to a specific action it then becomes easy to make the decision. You will need a conversion testing tool like Google Web Optimizer or reedge.com to find out the actual difference with a statistically significant certainty.
Abey John April 29, 2012, 2:08 pm

Yatin, nice. I suppose this orientation is for left to right languages and it gets flipped for right to left langs?
Anshoo Grover May 1, 2012, 1:38 pm
A common alternative is to have filters on the top – just below navigation. Though that is only practical if you have a few fields to filter on as there will always be a space constraint.

The following may also be noteworthy:
- Having filters on the left hand side would automatically bring the same to top when building a responsive design (adjusting for various screen sizes).
- The most important reason, I believe, for the same is that users are now habitual to the layout and expect to find filters/navigation at that location. There is huge incentive in sticking to users expectations.
The suggestion above, to try out A/B testing to see direct usage behavior data is a great option.
Hardik Khanna May 2, 2012, 6:05 am

Thanks all for the valuable replies.
Vishal Gupta May 3, 2012, 8:28 am

alos why all the online travel sites have search box & filter at left ?
Hardik Khanna May 4, 2012, 9:24 am

Thanks Siddharth.

The reason for posting this query arose from the pain point I faced while filtering on websites.

My point was that for a right handed person , who would generally have cursor on the right hand end of screen, it would be better to have filters ( which are generally less important than the content on the page) on right side of page. This will avoid moving the cursor from one end to other of the screen each time I am looking to either filter or scroll down the page.
Ranadeep May 7, 2012, 4:14 pm

Very true . Almost every e-com site has it on the left side