Navigation Redesign
Year.
2023
Role.
Product Designer
Tasks.
Competitor & User Research
Information Architecture
Design
Usability Prototyping
Documentation
UAT for go-live
About.
This project involved a complete overhaul of the UI and UX of our desktop navigation. With business needs requirements and our marketplace growing, the need for improved navigation became increasingly important.
The Process.
I restructured the primary navigation links to include only those most important with highest business value.
I then reorganised the subcategories within each parent category to help guide users along their journey.
I improved our UI styling to give the navigation look and feel a complete refresh
I introduced a combination of two link types, plain text and feature rich which allows content specialists to add a thumbnail, heading and sub-text to give context and enhance the understanding of some of our more complex products.
Our previous navigation showed all categories all at once, making it more challenging to process the information presented to them. When restructuring the categories within our navigation, I applied the principle of Hick's Law using progressive disclosure to only reveal content which the user is actively interested in.
In other words, a user would hover over a link found in the primary navigation such as, Beer taps & kegs. The first child element is open by default, revealing links only relevant to that subcategory. If the user continues to browse into other subcategories, it will continue the same behaviour thus making it easier to process where they want to go.
Usability testing.
The prototype which was built for new menu structure was used to conduct extensive usability tests ensuring that the new structure and flow was still familiar and usable to our current customer base.
Business Value: Marketing as a Service.
The introduction of marketing banners within the mega menu meant not only could we use these areas to further inspire and provide context to users, but we are now able to monetise it as advertising space to our marketplace partners.