Web Design Tips: 5 Laws of Ecommerce Navigation Design
Florence SONG | June 11, 2009To avoid the pitfalls of a site design that is too confusing, too ugly, or too experimental to be effective, the ecommerce site owner must strike a balance between leading-edge techniques and technologies, effectiveness, and aesthetics. So, in this article of “Web Design Tips” we will outline the laws for ecommerce site navigation design based on our projects experience to help any ecommerce business.
Law No. 1: Make Navigation Easy to Understand and Use
Shoppers browsing to an ecommerce store don’t want to be baffled by navigation. Make your site navigation easy to understand and use. Provide clear labels that explain what a user will find when he or she clicks. If you sell trousers, try labels like “Men’s Trousers” or “Women’s Trousers” or “GIORDANO” And put navigation in a predictable place, top, left, right, or front and center.
Law No. 2: Make Navigation Accessible
Making your ecommerce site easy for customers with disabilities is good for business and the right thing to do. Some of your customers are going to have disabilities that require them to surf the web using screen readers, refreshable Braille displays, magnifiers, or other helpful devices. One technique to try is to place text-based navigation and skip links (often hidden from most site visitors via CSS) at the very top of the page.
Law No. 3: Tell Me Where I Am
Before customers can make a good choice about where they want to go on your site, they should know where they are. Because so many online shoppers use search engines to locate online stores, your customers can enter your site just about anywhere. So there is no guarantee that they are starting on the home page. Use visual and text clues (i.e., breadcrumbs) to show the customer where he or she is on your site.
Law No. 4: Use Layers and Facets on Big Sites
If your ecommerce site has more than a few product categories, more than a handful of brands, or more than a dozen products, add navigation layers and facets. As a customer, He/she wants to be able to browse by brand, price, age-appropriateness, color, or just about any other relevant product attribute. Your navigation should let me do that right in place.
Law No. 5: Let There Be Search
Every ecommerce site should allow shoppers to just search for products. Not a lot of explanation needed. Add a search box to every page on your site to let shoppers search the products that they concerned. It is also a form of navigation.
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