Navigation Dropdown Menu
Background
At Home operates over 200 home decor stores in 40 states. They launched a website in 2020 to help customers shop more easily and safely.
We have over 50,000 products on our site. Our merchants were not sure how well these products are organized on our dropdown menu. They wanted to find out what the problems our customers running into and how can we improve them.
My Role
Leader Research
I did competitive research,
decided on which design
method to use and how to
conduct the test.
Data Analyst
I provided appropriate solutions
to site merchants basing on the analysis of test results.
UX Designer
The improved user experience by
iterating the visual design.
Goals
User: Find the product they want easily
Business: Categorize our products in a way that makes the most sense to our users and
leads to conversions.
Product: Improve user experience with intuitive structure
Started with card sorting
Research Insights
New Test
I proposed a tree testing plan to the team and got approved.
The Process
Define the tree: one section VS entire tree
Even I was told to test only a specific section of the tree at one time, I requested to include the entire tree in the test to avoid assuming that users will know which section to go to.
To test only Kitchen& Dining tree
A complete list of all our main content categories, and all their subcategories
What to test: Labels & Locations
Top Seller
I asked for a sales report from the merchant to test whether our best products are in a good place.
Potential Problem Areas
I did a competitive analysis to identify the potential location and label problems.
Preparing Testing Tasks
Limit number of tasks
By communicating with the merchant and grouping some of the test items, I reduced our tasks from 30 to 10 to get users involved.
Avoid leading phrasing
In the task instructions, I try to avoid using terms that give away the answers.
Recruiting representative users
At Home customers
I requested to test with real At Home customers rather than randomly assigned participants.
50 + participants
I suggested recruiting at least 50 participants for each test so that we can see patterns clearly and account for variations and outliers.
Interpreting the Results
Whether our products are findable
Which products are hard to find
Focus on task has a success rate less than 70%
What cause the problem of low task success rate
By taking a look at the pathway users take
Key Findings
The label is not clear and distinguishable.
Overlap categories at lower-level
Simplify Our Tree
Change the labels of subcategories to be more distinct.
Remove overlapping sub-category
Visual Design
Better visual hierarchy for fast, easy reading which means customers can find their product more easily.
Lessons Learned
This was my first time conducting tree testing and I didn’t have a clear plan at the beginning of what should we test and how to test in detail. But after studying and communicating with my team’s goal, I came up with a great plan for testing. My team is very happy with my findings and proposed solutions.
After we finish testing the first round of all categories on our site, I would like to dig deeper into some of the overlapping areas and might use card sorting to get better results.