Designing with constraints

Canyon has a nested doll folder structure drilling down 5 levels. It goes Home > category > sub category > model > model sub category. Not idea with a complex product line-up. You can’t change it without completely re-architecting the site. So if you want change, you have to work with this structure. 

Mega menu for the win 

Ecom sites have a mega menu for a reason. It gets customers to the right product in one click. And yes, lots of products means an increased time to target but that’s where UI really gets to shine.

Put the price on the menu 

One of the biggest debates was adding the ‘from price’. Senior stakeholders were concerned. They wanted customers to fall in love with the bike before asking the price. We wanted to anchor customer expectations firmly to their budget. Backed by a genius UX designer we held firm and launched with pricing. Every nugget of customer insight tells us this was the right decision. 

Concessions were made

Sadly one of the issues we can’t fix just yet is the 6 clicks on mobile. Remember that folder structure - well this is it in practice. Tedious clicking through unnecessary folders to get to the bike you want. Our first job is to simplify the site architecture, once that’s done we can (finally) redesign the folder structure.

Overnight success 

Before I got the approval to redesign the nav, I’d collate, translate and tally every comment which included the word lost’ from our customer feedback and Trustpilot comments. Overnight, I mean, literally overnight, those complaints ended. Our IA isn’t perfect and I really want to carve out time to help our gear team but as they say, perfection is the enemy of done.