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04 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
Top-level categorization There should be clear top-level categories. There could be only a handful or twenty, depending on how much information you have to spread around. The name of the category does make a big difference. If your site offers books, DVDs or other informational how-to products along with your regular product line, you might have one link titled ‘How-To,’ or ‘Media.’ Maybe ‘Books & More.’ The idea is to avoid naming your link something generic like, ‘Stuff.’ The top level category names should be general enough to encompass what you want them to contain but specific enough that customers immediately know what’s there. Looking at one of our sites, PondBiz.com, their large and successful pond products site lists 24 categories in the left navigation bar. It could be really annoying to have to click through each category and then click again to get to the products or information within. But their site makes good use of another good usability idea, minimizing clicks. Minimize Clicks One way to allow for easy, quick navigation is to keep the site structure somewhat ‘flat’ so users don’t have to click many times to get to products. The PondBiz.com navigation utilizes popout dynamic menus. Mousing over the navigation links reveals new subcategory options, saving a click. Another of our sites also uses the click-saving technique in a different way. PrewittsWorkWear.com uses an expandable menu. With this option, a little plus sign appears next to the main categories that have subcategories within them. Clicking the plus to the left of ‘Specialty’ reveals sub-menus for ‘Flame-Resistant’ and ‘High-Visibility’ work wear. This does involve an extra click to open the subcategories, but it is another way to keep navigation tighter, and some people don’t like to chase the expandable menus. Give More Ways to Shop MightyMerchant’s site manager allows the option to set up different category structures to give visitors more ways to shop. For example, it can be easy to set up Shop by Manufacturer, Shop by Brand, Shop by Season, Special Discounts, or Shop by Theme, as just a few examples. LearningServicesUS.com is one of our sites with a huge product catalog of educational materials for teachers. They utilize the same dynamic pop-outs for navigation that PondBiz uses, but what I want you to notice on this site is that they have a regular search but also cross-category searches. These narrow down searches by subject, manufacturer, and grade level. If your catalog is huge, or even if it’s not and you just have multiple brands, provide multiple ways for people to find what they’re looking for. The important thing is to think of the experience for the customer. We want to have navigation that allows customers to have a good experience that makes it easy to find items, but not be split up or mashed together to the point that it’s silly. It doesn’t make sense to have one category with only two or three items inside, and neither does it make sense to have too few categories with many items inside. Your email: Subscribe Unsubscribe
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