Google Finance Design Critique
I think the time has come where Google has lost its shine. No longer are the products and services that Google launch breath-taking or really newsworthy in my opinion because they all seem to follow Yahoo’s path. Gmail and Google Maps were a step above and beyond what was currently available, but besides that what else has there been?
Yesterday saw the launch of Finance Google and instead of taking strides in the design department they fall a bit short from Yahoo’s offering I believe when it comes to homepage design, but knock a homerun with the internal pages.
Homepage
I don’t know if there is a term for this in the design world, so I am simply going to say that the page has no “balance”. From the beginning you get a page where the leftside is overloaded, while the right is exposed with a huge gap and all of this occurs above the fold. I understand that recent quotes would allow for the space to become filled if the user chose to do so, but that much white space becomes a distraction for me.
You are given the ability to add stocks to your portfolio, but you are only aware of that if you take the time to look at the upper-right portion of the page and for some reason the stocks in your portfolio aren’t shown on the homepage. Google definitely has the knowledge to give users the option of showing either recent quotes or portfolio quotes so it is kind of confusing why this option is not available from the start.
Looking at the Market Summary box, the graph changes when you hover over the different markets. The problem with this though is that this feature is not readily apparent to the user. I just happened to move my mouse over that way and discovered that there was a hover effect. Why is this kept a secret and how can Google let the users know that hovering changes the graphs?
Company Pages
This is where Google Finance gives the competition a run for the money. The first thing you may notice is the difference between a fixed width design for the homepage versus a liquid design for the internal pages. I suppose the reason for this is to allow for the graphs to become as wide as the user wants since that is the main focus of the page. Like Google Maps there is a lot of cool AJAX (using Macromedia’s Flash/JavaScript Intergration Kit) action going on and I really like how points are marked on the graph signifying a news event that is linked to the right of the chart.
Google makes the same mistake it made on the homepage with regards to hovering in the Management box. Hovering over the names brings up more information and the only way to know this is to either understand what the tiny blue arrow means or to accidently hover over the names. There definitely has to be a better way to handle this, possibly with a better icon.
As for the rest of the page it is what you would expect from Google, simple and bland (almost like this site). Not really a bad thing, but on a page with so much information a little more flair would make it easier to read and use I believe.
Design and the Future
Design doesn’t make or break a company when the product already is a failure, but as more and more companies being to offer more of the same products and services or their competition is able to quickly match their offerings, design can easily become the determining factor for a user. That is why I am very surprised not to see more emphasis placed on design by Google to really entice people away from Yahoo or any other financial website. I am sure there is a gameplan in there somewhere that I just don’t know of, but you have to wonder how long can you wait before it takes effect?
Related reading:
I think they made the same mistake with Google video; they have a good product, good Javascript, but no attention paid to visual design. To be honest I don’t think Google has ever hired any frontend designers. And while they may be very successful with search and mail, it’s true that they are ignoring the need for design to entice users in other areas.
By Christian Montoya on March 22, 2006 9:59 am
I love the internal page even though many others have said otherwise. From a visual standpoint it’s very uncluttered, various type colors and weights are used to great effect, and the Flash stock chart is killer (can it be saved as an image, or no?) so in my mind I think they did a great job.
From a functionality standpoint though, it’s not fully competitive with Yahoo!’s offering, but like I read on someone’s weblog (I forget who), they said that it doesn’t have to be fully competitive, but just has to give enough functionality so that people *try it out* and that’s the key.
By Mike Rundle on March 22, 2006 10:03 am
Take a look at your own website for lack of balance. Oh, sponsors, I seee.
By deci on March 22, 2006 12:52 pm
deci: Thanks for explaining. I totally see what you are talking about.
By Scrivs on March 22, 2006 1:15 pm
I agree with your assessment Scrivs. I think they also missed an opportunity to improve the standard stock ticker symbol lookup widget.
Here’s a mockup of what I’d like to see:
http://surprisehighway.com/blog/2006/03/feature_request_smarter_stock/
By Jason Siffring on March 22, 2006 2:10 pm
deci, that’s not the same at all. There is a difference on sidebars and a two column design. If you haven’t noticed, it’s the content that matters here. On that Google page, each side “weights” just as much. Or atleast, I think they should. Good read Scrivs!
By Alexander K on March 23, 2006 11:10 am
I believe the word you are looking for is “fugly”.
It’s weird for a company as large as Google to spend 99% of their time writting apps, and only 1% of their time on design.
It’s easy to make “simple” look good.. rather than looking “simple”. If you look at amazon from 1990 it’s looks similar to this.
I’m always confused with Google about this fact.
By Shaun Guidolin on March 23, 2006 11:30 am
I think you’re being a little “one-sided” in you analysis here, Paul.
Instead of looking at the design for the sake of generic design, let’s look at it from a usability and IA (cause I know you like all things IA) perspective.
1. If you clear your cache, you’ll see the first page of Google Finance is NOT 2 columns, but 1. Market Summary followed by recent news.
2. Compare GF to it’s competitors, Yahoo and Marketwatch
— The Google interface is much cleaner (as you acknowledge somewhat in your post). The emphasis is where it needs to be — on the chart, the current price and the recent news.
It’s there, uncluttered, and easy to read.
Now look at that same information displayed in Yahoo. It’s all there, in a somewhat cluttered database, along with four banner ads which take prominence over the chart and the attention of your eye. Of course, let’s not forget that to even get to the company information / chart, you have to first get past a 200+ pixel tall banner ad on YF’s index page.
Same with Marketwatch. To even get to the stock information, you have to get past a full page splash ad on the index page first. Once you get to it, the stock information and chart are practically smothered out by still more ads and marketwatch article pimping.
3. The index page you are complaining about, only shows up after a cookie has been set which shows the stocks you’ve recently reseached. So you get a custom page with the stock prices and relevant news. Neither Yahoo nor Marketwatch do that.
4. Most investors have a diverse portfolio. Given that, the liklihood is high that there would be more than one quote listed on the left side, along with all the news for all the quotes researched. Therefore, a typical user would probably never experience the lop-sidedness you did.
5. It’s easy to find the field to enter a ticker symbol in. I can’t say the same for the other two
6. It’s not cluttered with ads. That alone, makes it a much better experience in my mind
Gotta say, considering what the others are offering, Google wins this battle in my mind.
By Mark on March 23, 2006 2:50 pm
Nice analysis Mark. I definitely wasn’t aware of the one-colum/cache issue so that definitely changes things some. I do see your point with banner ads on the Yahoo page as they are very distracting, but I guess I am just waiting around for Google’s ads to start showing up because we all know they will appear sooner or later. Which kind of makes you wonder why not put them in now so the users are used to them instead of surprising them one day.
As for #4, that was a point I thought I brought up in the entry, but I guess I failed to mention as I was thinking the same thing.
By Scrivs on March 23, 2006 3:19 pm
“Like Google Maps there is a lot of cool AJAX (using Macromedia’s Flash/JavaScript Intergration Kit) action going on and I really like how points are marked on the graph signifying a news event that is linked to the right of the chart.”
Just because the charts are cool and offered by Google, doesn’t make them usable or useful. People don’t use charts primarily to be entertained. They use them to make decisions, important decisions involving their or someone else’s hard-earned dollars so they don’t end up eating dog food when they’re old.
Google screwed up here because it did not think like its potential users — and its potential users’ users.
For starters, consider this. It is impossible for me to link you directly to a 1, 2, 3 or 5-year chart for any company on Google Finance, so I can’t show you why a particular company’s current stock price looks attractive or unattractive relative to its past pricing.
For Google, this is a huge issue because to gain critical mass Google Finance needs finance bloggers and the like to link to its pages and charts — a basic and common thing that most of them do.
I am not a designer or a web developer. I am a communication strategist who believes that the web design community can do enormous social good by helping ordinary investors to make better investment decisions — instead of being overwhelmed by legalese or distracted by funkiness.
Please, spare us the cool. Get serious.
By Dominic Jones on March 28, 2006 8:34 pm
Hey
Thanks for this great read, i have bookmarked your site so i can revisted it
Keep up the good work
Dirk
By Dirk van de Broek on December 12, 2006 11:04 am