Using Menus, Hierarchies, and Navigational Inter-Relationships to Achieve: User Self-Targetting
Once you understand that good Web site design is about providing the User with choices that are understandable, and whose consequences are both predictable, instructive and rewarding, it becomes a simple matter to apply those principles to driving sales.
Always assume that the user will proceed continuously from a starting point towards that which is most interesting or attractive to them.
The most basic navigational structure is the Linear Sequence, illustrated below:
In this arrangement, the User is presented with only one path (both forwards and backwards) and, because there are no Divisive Choices presented, is of limited effectiveness in driving sales. A Divisive Choice is a navigational opportunity that will separate traffic into two or more categories about which some information may be established based on that choice -- for example a doorway that is labeled "restrooms" will tell us something about the people who go through it, and then subsequent doorways labeled "men" and "women" will INCREASE the amount of information that is known about the user on a particular location/page as they go deeper. Well designed sites that make good use of this principle can accumulate extraordinarily deep targetting information, without the need for cookies or questionnaires.
The below diagram show a structure that begins to offer more Divisive Choices, but is too "shallow". Users are forced into a linear structure that does not provide Divisive Choices and therefore does not provide tagetting information.
The diagram below shows a site structure that is troubled in a different way. Here, the problem is
too much choice, presented in a way that neither rewards the user by bringing them closer to what they want, nor provides the operator of the Site with valuable sales opportunities arising from the creation of self-targetted locations within the site.
Ideally, what you want is to direct the User through a sequence of choices that will tell you who they are, what they want, and when the best moment to offer them a purchase opportunity is. The diagram below shows a balanced (not too shallow, not too deep) site structure, with an appropriate number of Divisive Choices and an excellent likelihood of creating high-value self-targetted User locations where purchase opportunities may be presented with the highest possible likelihood of success.
When this design principle is applied correctly in the context of an e-commerce site, you have the best possible outcome of happy Users who are finding what they want, quickly, efficiently and with minimal difficulty, and a site that is converting as many Users as WOULD buy (if they find what they want) into buyers, and also as many as MIGHT buy (for providing the right Divisive Choices at the right time).
I know you can only appreciate the power of this simple principle so much by looking at flat diagrams. So, I created a simple Web Site (with just one Divisive Choice) so you can navigate inside it as if you were a User yourselves, and have a deeper sense of the value of good design, both to User and Merchant.
TAKE A LOOK:
2HP