To "C" Or Not To "C". That Is The Question.
We're in the process of doing a significant facelift with our PoolDawg.com website, and one of the bigger questions we've discussed was whether or not to retain the traditional "C" navigation.
The idea behind the "C" navigation is that you have three primary navigation points: your top bar, your side nav and your footer nav. This has been the staple of website navigation for as long as I can remember, but recently companies have started moving away from the concept. Many companies are taking the left navigation bar completely out of the equation. In some cases, sites are almost completely doing away with the major category navigation, forcing users to rely almost exclusively on site search.
While a majority of ecommerce sites still use the traditional "C" navigation, the move away from this is a trend worth watching. In our case though, we decided to stick with a classic navigation for our upcoming facelift. Ultimately, the decision wasn't that difficult. We considered our customers and our industry, determined what our customers would be most comfortable with and followed the logical path.
This isn't to say that further down the road we'll get rid of our top/left/bottom navigation or that the old school C navigation is right for everyone. In many cases sites can benefit greatly from a move away from tradition, but or now we're going to hang on to it like that cozy Sunday evening sweater.
3 Comments
russellackner says:
Interesting take on nav. Of the sites I've designed without a bottom nav, clients would request it. I think this is a question of usability and comfort/user expectations rather than shifting from the norm just to be a trendsetter. Not all trends are advantageous unless proven so over time. Like buzzwords and design styles - everything goes 'round. Maybe changing styles in this respect is being ahead of the times - which may be the secret. So when it comes 'round again it will be recognized as innovation and not a trend.
PetsRight says:
I don't see the advantage of making customers rely exclusively on site search. Sure search functions are more powerful than they've ever been.. but I'd rather click on a link that says "hats" and will show me all of the hats available as opposed to typing "hats" in a search field and having to weed through results that might be related but not actually what I'm looking for.
Hmm. Maybe that's the point? The cross-sell?
Patrick says:
One interesting comparison would be to graph the age range and products purchased mainly by search function vs those which were simply found by clicking. If the products tend toward one or the other method (finding via Search vs traditional hunt & click) we may see more isolation/stratification of one method over the other in the navigation, depending mainly on the types of products being offered and the respect client bases need to be more efficient with their time.
Traditional shoppers who are immersed into a lifestyle most probably take more time, whereas a 'tekkie' looking for a particular motherboard may simply use the part number in the Search. Adding the search function is more for frequent, focused or more informed users who don't like to click-around the site to find different products.
As a designer I always rely on redundancy in the navigation and have never heard a single complaint. A smart comparison would be to offer either a random navigation layout contrasting both - and thereby giving the random results of all users grouped together, or, simply give the users a choice of 'fully navigated' or 'bare-bones' interface and see which is more popular with the customers at your site.
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