First step in an online store is having products to sell. Second step is to organize them in such a way that allows the customer to find exactly what they are looking for. You want to have a site navigation that is helpful, intuitive and drives sales. Customers should not be steered away from your site because they get lost or are unable to find something.

These are a few guidelines that help create the best navigation to lead to more conversions.

• Don’t be Different. Navigation should always be at the top and/or left side. You sometimes can get away with it on the right side. But it is best to keep things simple and not cause any confusion for customers.
• Break down your product Categories. If you’re selling furniture, you want to break it down by types (tables, chairs, sofas, beds, etc). You can also have other groupings like finishes (oak, cherry, etc) or brands (Thomasville, Pearson, etc). But don’t get too carried away. Having a lot of links may scare off potential customers. Try and break it down into two or three main groupings, and then have five or six links under each.
• Be reasonable in your breakdown. Never make someone click more than three times. If a man is looking for a funny zombie shirt, don’t make him click on Men’s > Tee Shirts > Horror > Undead > Zombies. If its not necessary, then don’t do it.
• Be Obvious. Having pretty images that represent your categories is cute, but does it do its job? Would a potential customer come to your site and understand that an image of a bubble is actually a link to one of your categories? Its best to use text that spells out where it leads.
• Use Breadcrumbs, especially if you have a large product catalog. This is really good for when in subcategories or individual products. It lets people know how they got there and where to return to if they don’t like the page they are on. Its typically good to do location or path based breadcrumbs, but depending on what you are selling an attribute based breadcrumb system might be better. Smashing Pumpkins has a great article on best practices of breadcrumbs.
• Have a Homepage Link. This may seem obvious but a lot of people forget to do this. Typically, the logo image will always take the user to homepage. Some people don’t know this, so you should have an actual home link as well.
• Be Consistent. You do not want to have a different navigational heirarchy on each page. This will confuse people and they will shop somewhere that is less confusing.
• Allow for Search. If you have a lot of products, you want to give customers the opportunity to find exactly what they want. The web is great for window shopping, but there are people who go into a store and go straight for what they needed, and then leave. Make sure your site can cater to these people as well.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 7:08 pm and is filed under E-Commerce Guide | . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.