Status — In synthesis

Comparison-table placement in technical content

Question

Should a comparison table appear before the prose explanation of each option, or after it?

Hypothesis

Placing the table early gives a scannable map that makes the following prose easier to absorb, at the risk of readers leaving with an oversimplified view.

Who it concerns

Technical decision-makers comparing approaches.

Intervention

Table-early layout in the scraping vs crawling vs search guide; table-late in the browser-automation decision guide.

What would be observed

Which version reviewers can summarise more accurately
Whether the early-table version produces confident but wrong conclusions

What would count as a useful signal

One placement consistently produces more accurate summaries across reviewers with different backgrounds.

Notes

Early impressions favour table-early when options are parallel, table-late when options are nested.

comparisondecision support

This entry records a design intention. It does not report measured results, traffic, rankings, or customer outcomes.