Product Menu

[mdean]

We have 7 Departments, about 6 categories per department and about 6 differnent products for each category.

Which type of navigation do you feel customers have an easier time using and creates higher sales?

A)Listing ALL of the DEPARTMENTS with a flyout menu to the category pages.

B)Listing ALL of the PRODUCTS in text with maybe a sub-heading for each department.

Input would be appreciated!

[hfwd]

In addition to flyouts, why not create another menu below it with "popular items"?

[lorax]

Different people browse in different ways. Some will be able to see the logical order behind using departments to lead to categories while others will see it as very confusing. Do some A-B testing if you really want to customize the navigation to your customers.

A common methodology is to use the brief navigation combined with writing copy for the central area - broken up into topics like Sales, Quality, Service, Hot Products, New Products, etc and pepper these with links to the more popular items within your catalog. This does two things. The departments in the navigation will give those of us who like to see the breadth of your store (which speaks to your selections) and the pinpoint links to specific products will give those who just want a particular item a way to get right to it.

And make sure your search engine works exceptionally well including fuzzy searches and has the ability to do singular/plural matches!