Forum Moderators: buckworks
I'm in the process of having my site redevloped. For the sake of this thread lets say it is a Website selling car parts.
Up until now, People can browse by category, so they want a handbrake for their car, They click on 'Brakes', then 'Handbrakes', and it displays all of our handbrakes, and they find the one for their car. Or they could do a search e.g. Ford Escort Handbrake, and it will come up.
A few of my competitors allow customers to 'search by brand', so the customer could click on 'Ford', then 'Escort, adn then 'Brakes', which would show all brakes that we keep for a ford escort, so their would be handbrakes, foot brakes, brake pads etc.
Is it going to be overly complicated to have both Navigation types? or is it good to offer customers a choice? It will also greatly increase my content which i imagine will be good for the serps.
So they can go
Brakes > Handbrakes or
Ford > Excort > Brakes or
'Ford excort handbrake' in the search.
What do you reckon, is this all good, or too complicated?
Then again, you may well have a load of stuff that isn't specific to a particular brand (generic floor mats, car care products etc), so it's a tricky one.
My advice would be to take a look at some established sites and see how they do it - make notes of what you particularly like and/or dislike and "borrow" the best navigation ideas.
Thas what I thought, i want people to be able to find things how they want to, not how I tell them too, so all three types of Navigation will cover all bases.
Falsedawn,
Some of my competitors do it how I have been doing (just by category), but the 'big boys' seem to do it by Make > Mobel > Brakes etc, thats why I thought it was about time I offered this as a way of navigating.
What I don't want to do is make things too complicated, but if I label each navigation properly I should be ok.
I was going to label them 'Browse by Category' and 'Browse by Manufacturer' (or would 'Browse by Car' be better?)
Thanks.
And of course a search box.
In addition I have created several landing pages. Landing pages for manufacturers, for product names and for problems the products solve.
Until now I have had very good feedback.
Nielsen Norman recommends offering at least a couple of different ways for folks to get to what their looking for plus a search mechanism
and who is Nielsen Norman if i amy ask
Search for Nielsen Norman and have a look through their site... useful for anyone wanting to design a user friendly site.
Back on topic: I think you've got it right by offering the two ways of browsing.
adding to zulu_dude's response - if you've got some cash to invest I'd suggest you buy or borrow their book "E-Commerce User Experience". It covers this topic in depth.
"Browse by manufacturer" sounds too generic.
Thats what I thought as well, I thought I might go with 'Browse by Car'? Or is that still too generic.
