Work / Enterprise UX

Navigation Redesign

Customers landing on De Bijenkorf's e-commerce site struggled to orient themselves. I owned the navigation rework from research through to a validated final design.

When
2018 to 2019
Where
De Bijenkorf
My role
UX research and design, in a cross-discipline squad
Delivered
New navigation, design-system patterns, A/B test plan
De Bijenkorf navigation, before and after: an eight-category flyout becomes a cleaner four-category structure on desktop and mobile
Before and after, on desktop and mobile.

Own it end to end: from card sort to a design that had been A/B tested in production.

Part of a cross-discipline squad focused on how customers orient themselves when they land.

01 · The research

Start with how people actually use it

A usability audit, best practice from Baymard, a look at how competitors solved the same problem. An online card sort to learn how customers themselves group products, and ongoing monitoring of customer surveys.

To see real behaviour, I went through session recordings in SessionCam and ran a data analysis in Google Analytics.

8 categories became 4 worlds

Dames · Heren · Kinderen · Wonen & Vrije Tijd. The same four worlds the physical stores are laid out in.

02 · The structure

Match the model people already have

The card sort and the store layout pointed the same way: customers already think in worlds, not in a flat list of eight top-level categories. So the new top level had four, each one a world you could step into.

Sketch → Marvel prototype → in-store customer testing → the full UX team → a locked direction.

03 · Design and testing

Refined against real customers, in the store

Ideas were discussed with business and design, mocked in Sketch, and made clickable in Marvel. I ran in-store testing with that prototype to find where it needed work, then reviewed the patterns with the full UX design team before committing.

A robust navigation system, built to be modified efficiently. A huge project with huge impact.

04 · Handover and result

Shipped, documented, and proven

Final designs went into the Zeroheight design system with usage docs for developers and designers, and I created the Jira tickets. For rollout, I worked with business stakeholders to write the hypothesis and requirements for the A/B test that proved the change out.

Structure that doesn't fight your users?

Research-led information architecture, from card sort to shipped and tested.