Finn.no bits: ordering criteria puzzle

I am a long-time and heavy Finn.no user. I have bought 2 cars through finn.no, 1 apartment, and just recently a wonderful second-hand Stokke Balans chair. In the last few months Finn has begun to “redesign” (if what they are doing can be called a redesign) the service, adding - timidly - a new feature here, a new UI there, in a way which - planned or not - gives the impression of being an attempt at seamlessly morphing their UI without the users really noticing.

I noticed, and - put aside the usual and natural resistance to change of a UI which I have used “as is” for years - I have decied to deliver these Finn bits here, to comment on some of the ongoing changes.

This first bit is about the ordering criteria on the real estate page.

I must admit I do not recall the ordering criteria Finn used before the change. But I have notice the re-ordering of this list some weeks ago, and the new ordering criteria has baffled me since. I am lucky I look at real estate in Akershus, which is rather stably the second biggest regional market. However, Hordaland has surpassed in a number of times, and that gave away the (baffling!) ordering criteria Finn has chosen. It appears that they list regions by number of properties on sale, so that if Akershus has more properties on ale than Rogaland it will be displayed higher, if Hordaland has more, then Hordaland will be displayed higher. So when this latter case occurred, I suddenly couldn’t find Akershus any longer!

I would appreciate a stable list, where placements stay the same over time. I might want to “explode” from the list the top 3 (4?) “destinations”, and keep otherwise the full list solidly under alphabetical ordering. Maybe also a tag-cloud-type design could be interesting as a UI for top destinations, either using the number of properties or the amount of visits as the magnifying parameter.

Now, it seems true that the order may be fairly stable, but repeated use allows learning, so regardless of the initial placement, I’ll find back “my” link(s). HOwever, for a first timer, there’s nothing more familiar than the alphabetical ordering.

I think I’ll have fun picking on Finn.no UI