Ecommerce
Information Architecture
Information Architecture Validation
Project
mindfulness
This project was to fix usability issues with the navigation of JohnLewis.com with no engineering input. We had to plan for increased ’skews’ and increase the visibility of fashion items, such as dresses, part of the company strategy.
Method
service_toolbox
I audited the site and created a spreadsheet. I then held workshops with category owners and with buyers. I spent time working in John Lewis stores talking to customers. We created three product categories to stress test a new hierarchy. We used tree testing and iterated before doing a partial release. We got great results.
Outcome
Elevation
We successfully validated a new Information architecture using a new method.
The resulting IA worked well.
People found fashion items quicker leading to a slight sales increase.
We removed users bouncing between electrical item categories.
We saw a radical increase in some areas, such as game consoles seeing 50% increase of views and sales.
Based upon how products sold and customer expectations we broke products down into three groups. Heros sold well and made money, workhorses where expected items that were further down the demand curve but and problem children were hard to categories items that could belong in multiple categories.
Stakeholders were involved with the testing directly and indirectly at each point.
Heat maps of navigation gave us a solid information about how to structure sections.
We also used product sales and profit.
We used tree testing to validate the new information architecture.
The end result was a complete new Information Architecture for the John Lewis site.
The IA restructured what was navigation and what was part of filtering.
Bringing fashion items up to the top of the site was one key objective.