The home page of Organize.com, with selected types of navigation highlighted

Much has been written about designing website navigation, but Organize.com does an especially good job of showing the kind of helpful navigation that results when you think like your customers.

By understanding that there are different types of customers that will be looking for things in different ways, the designers have created navigation that gives buyers many ways to find what they’re looking for—in spite of the fact that the navigation groupings fly in the face of the some of the traditional ways that people have thought about navigation.

Three very different approaches (also highlighted in yellow in the screenshot):

• As seen in . . . — Navigation by magazine cover (with date).  The screenshot shows the expanded view that appears when you click on the link in the main nav.
• Organized by color
• Shop by brand

In addition, the designers have included a variety of other content categories, including . . .

• What’s New—By date, making it easy for frequent shoppers to zero in on the items recently added to the site.
• Video Library—By content format; a different way to engage buyers and stimulate interest in featured products.
• Eco-Friendly—By item material and construction, though more likely this works as a psychographic profile of a buyer segment.
• Clearance—By price (i.e., lowered); attracting the segment of shoppers interested in “a deal.”
• Mrs. Organized—By application, with a blog written by in-house and guest experts.

Along with As seen in . . . , these are all in the same navigation area, the brown tabs shown in the screenshot.  What’s the common element that would cause one to group these together?  None whatsoever, other than that these work in helping the many different types of buyers.

Other main navigation items include . . .

• Gifts and Occasions
• She—A category that includes The Career Girl, The Hostess, The Mommy, and others
• College
• Kitchen, Closet, Bath, Storage, Shelving, and other locations and applications

As above, there is no logical reason that these would be grouped together.

In other words, if a person were to go through the exercise of thinking, “What goes together?” you would never end up with these navigation groupings.  On the other hand, if you were to think, “Why might someone be coming to the site?” and “What are they trying to accomplish?” and “What factors are most important to them?” one might easily end up with top level navigation that includes As seen in . . . , Kitchen, and Eco-Friendly and Shop by Color.

It all comes down to thinking like a customer rather than as an information architect, or at least the way many information architects have approached this problem.

And what brought me to Organize.com?  Trying to match a tall white plastic bin purchased several years ago at The Container Store, earlier today I stopped into one of their stores and walked down every aisle looking for the item.  I didn’t see it, and asked a clerk.  She summoned other clerks, I described to them the size, shape, style, material, and color of the item—I hadn’t brought it with me—and they said that they didn’t think they carried it anymore.

At home, I looked at the bottom of the bin and saw the name of the manufacturer molded into the bottom.  A quick Google search brought me to Organize.com, where I clicked on Shop by Brand.  I selected the manufacturer and clicked on “View all” when I got to the manufacturer’s page, and then quickly scrolled through what would have otherwise been 46 pages of items and found that they do make the same bin, though in a slightly different shade of white.  Total elapsed time from the Google search?  About three minutes, thanks to the site’s helpful navigation.

(The Container Store’s site doesn’t include the shopping brand as a navigation choice; entering the name of the manufacturer in the search box on the site returns no results.)

A note about the IDEA Process

In work for Nokia, GameStop, and other clients we developed the IDEA process: Iterative Development, Evaluation, and Analysis, which is a process for creating site blueprints (including navigation and information architecture) based on in-depth sessions with users interacting with current and development sites to complete tasks.

In 2005, however, while serving as the VP of marketing for a security start-up in Cambridge, we thought that commissioning global research from a well-known analyst firm would help the efforts of a large partner—they owned more than 150 companies around the world and posted annual sales in excess of $3 billion—who was investing in us and other companies in order to establish a presence in an emerging field.

As a result, I contacted a range of firms, from a small boutique that focused on this growing segment to one of the world’s largest firms that had offices around the world.  In my initial messages to them I explained the project and made clear that it would be paid for our global partner, which I identified by name.

In the case of the largest firm I contacted, I included a note asking about recent coverage, or lack thereof:

My message to the account person at the analyst firm

Kevin–

We continue to be mystified by some of the reports that come out, including the recent one that has no mention of [our company] despite the fact that we designed the architecture of one of the largest [deployments] in the world, the [name of deployment and client].

Can you shed any light on why in the Worldwide Identity and Access Management Market Analysis (Filing Information: August 2005, [name of analyst firm] #[publication number]) there’s no mention at all of [our firm], not even in this section:

Many Players, Many IAM Solutions
In addition to the market leaders that most IT shops are very familiar with, several newer companies have emerged in the IAM market over the past 12.24 months.

On another note, we’re talking to a few firms about the project I’ve described below.
If this is of interest, please let me know.

Best regards–

Lee

[Name of our company] has a very close relationship with [name of global partner], and we have recently identified an opportunity to work together to help advance the understanding of [technology] around the world.
To this end, we’re looking for a firm that is interested in the following:
- Creating a comprehensive list of [technology] programs around the world
= All government-sponsored programs
= Large, innovative, or otherwise notable commercial or non-profit programs
- Identifying and commenting on key trends.
- Profiling specific programs that are useful illustrations of critical implementation principles.
- Conducting quantitative and qualitative research on key topics identified in the data.
- Compiling this into an annual report available to selected individuals and (potentially) sold.
- Participating in joint press activities around the release of the results.

This is ambitious, and in the first year the focus may be on the basics, and especially the creation of the comprehensive list.  With the format and process established, later years might include more discussion of trends as well as primary research.

In the process of trading calls and e-mail messages in order to arrange a call with this analyst firm, the administrative assistant at the firm forwarded some of her company’s internal discussion when she sent the Outlook appointment to the several people from offices in the US and Europe who were to be on this call.

It is included below in its entirety, though some information has been withheld in order to protect (?) the identity of the firm.

The Outlook meeting request that I received from the analyst firm

Hello-

Below you will find the dial info for the above meeting.  Please feel free to contact me should you need additional information.

Dialing in from:

An outside line: 1-866-xxx-xxxx follow the system prompts and enter in the ID# which is xxxx

[location name]: dial into extension xxxxxx,  follow the system prompts and enter in the ID# which is xxxx

[location name]: dial into extension xxxxxxx, follow the system prompts and enter in the ID# which is xxxx

Here’s  the string of e-mails relative to this meeting:

Kevin,
I found some old notes about this company. It is a small company that has changed stategies a few times. It seemes to be more of a systems integrator than a product vendor. Given that they probay didn’t buy our report and their outrageous demand that we cover them, I’m a little leery.

The report they cited only covered Identity Management software. [Their company] seems to sell mostly hardware and system integration services. Sally will cover hardware in another report and Allan [witheld] covers SIs. As of Oct 1, this coverage is combined in a single CIS, Security Services & Identity Management.

As for their projects, it would be very, very expensive for them to complete this laundry list.

In any, let’s set up a call and see if we get some money out of them.

Chris
————————–
Chris [withheld]
VP, [withheld]
[withheld]
xxx-xxx-xxxx Cell
xxx-xxx-xxxx Office

From: Kevin [withheld]
Sent: 08/22/2005 11:23 AM
To: Chris [withheld]
Cc: Sally [withheld]
Subject: Fw: [Our] most recent report, and interest in a new project

Chris,

Here is the email I mentioned to you this am, thoughts/feedback?

Also, any interest or feedback on the project he outlines at the bottom of his email?

Thanks,
Kevin