With all the modern gadgetry of eCommerce, it’s easy to overlook basics such as site navigation. In this post, the first in the 3 Things series, covering 3 innovative ways e-tailers are differentiating themselves, I’ll review some creative navigation strategies.
Solution Oriented Navigation

Traditionally, both retailers and e-tailers have organized their stores based on product categories. There’s nothing wrong with this, in fact it’s very effective. However, what happens when your site or in-store visitor doesn’t have a product in mind, but rather a problem? For example:

• “I don’t know what I’m looking for, I just need a gift for mom!”
• “I’m sick, and I need something to sooth a sore throat”
• “I’m disorganized, I need something to get me on track”

In addition to offering product based navigation, Seabear, a seller of fine seafood, offers a solution oriented navigation offering three choices: Give a Gift, Entertain Family & Friends, and Healthy Dining. For customers unfamiliar with fine seafood (like me), this is a great starting point that helps visitors select a product that meets their needs.

Filter Based Navigation

Many customers are accustomed to navigating to a product category page, then filtering down or sorting by various criteria. Some retailers are shortcutting this process by allowing customers to navigate directly to a product category with pre-filtered criteria.

For example, makeup retailer Lancome allows customers to browse by the color of the product.

Shoeline.com allows visitors to view pre-filtered product listings, narrowing down the selection by color or size. This greatly eliminates the frustration of having to sift through endless product listing pages of irrelevant merchandise.

Image Based Navigation

I hadn’t visited Overstock.com lately, and was surprised to see their untraditional homepage. In addition to placing a heavy emphasis on search, your eyes are effectively drawn to the image based categories. For department style stores with a wide variety of products such as Overstock, the pictures serve well to help visitors quickly scan and make a selection.

What do these 3 strategies have in common? Nothing, except these companies all sought to understand how their customers want to shop, and fulfilled these needs. Sometimes, going back to the basics of navigation can pay huge dividends.

What 3 Things does your site need? Get 3 recommendations from Palmer Web Marketing.

Walking out of a theater last night, I struggled to convey to my wife why I didn’t like the movie. “I can’t tell you exactly what they could’ve done better,” I said, “I just know they did it wrong.”

Odds are, 99% of the internet population is clueless about good web design, just as I’m ignorant about creating a good movie. In other words, if you asked them which elements are most important in creating a professional website, they couldn’t tell you.

What they could identify, although subconsciously, is bad web design. If a customer perceives that little thought and effort was put into designing your site, they may draw a similar conclusion about your products or services.

While many factors contribute to site abandonment, some research suggests bad site design sits at the top of the list.

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 Usable Web Design Principles - How Bad Web Design is Like a Bad Movie: Download (221)

Google has raised the bar. If you misspell a word, it tells you. If you perform a search returning millions of results, they prioritize the results by showing you the most relevant page (usually).

Compare that to most internal site search features on eCommerce sites. Not only can they not handle misspellings, they usually to a poor job of ranking results. Combine a poor site search feature with a confusing navigation, and you’ve got a usability nightmare. Below I’ve gathered up 11 ideas for improving your internal site search feature.
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Good website navigation is the quintessential web usability principle. Yet so often it is neglected in favor of more glamorous site improvements. Just as a city cannot function without efficient roads and highways, your site will suffer without a logical, simple, and consistent navigation menu. Below I’ve gathered 10 Do’s and don’ts regarding website navigation.

1. Thou Shalt Use Left-hand or Vertical Menus: Don’t get fancy and put your navigation structure on the right hand side of the site. Since visitors are accustomed to vertical or left navs, this is the equivalent to telling them to drive on the wrong side of the road.
2. Thou Shalt use Breadcrumb Navigation Trails: There is no greater navigation tool than Breadcrumb (aka Cookie crumb) trails. It easily allows visitors to go up or down a level and re-orient themselves when they get lost. Below is an example of a Bread crumb trail:

          Home > Top Category > Middle Category > Lower Category > Page Detail

3. Thou Shalt Not Overwhelm the Visitor with Too Many Options:  Typically, you shouldn’t include more than 7 options on your primary navigation. More than this, and you users will feel overwhelmed.
4. Thou Shalt prioritize Each Menu Item: Make sure your menu items are listed in priority from left to right or from top to bottom. Ask yourself “what action do I want the visitor to take?” Then lead your visitors along this path.
5. Thou Shalt Not Change the Nav on Each Page: Never change anything on your navigation from page to page. This is extremely confusing and unprofessional.
6. Thou Shalt Show the Visitor Where they Are and Where they’ve been: I strongly recommend using some sort of indicator in your primary navigation to show users where they are. For example, if your site uses tabs in the navigation, change the color of the category that is currently being viewed. In addition, be sure to change color of visited text links so the user doesn’t accidentally visit a page he or she has already been to.
7. Thou Shalt Not Rely Solely on Dynamic  Rollover Menus: Remember, not everyone is using the same browser technology as you. Make sure your navigation is useful in all the major browser types. Additionally, ensure that each link is crawl ablea by search engines.
8. Thou Shalt Not Stuff SEO Keywords in Your Navigation: This is both unprofessional and useless from an SEO point of view. Keywords within the universal navigation of a website are rarely considered as a ranking factor.
9. Thou Shalt Not Use Fancy, Unreadable Fonts: Resist the temptation to make your navigation look like a piece of art. While fancy graphics have a very important place in a website, they certainly do not belong in the navigation.
10. Thou Shalt Make the Company Logo Link to the Home Page: This is so basic, yet I run across sites on a daily basis that do not make their company logo (usually located in the upper left corner) clickable.