Stop Hiding Behind Products

by Jared Spool
Issue No. 3
10 March 2011

Back in January of 2011, the New York Times ran a great piece about the problem of snow piling up in Boston and just where the city public works folks are putting it. While many readers found it interesting, I’m guessing it was a very exciting article for the team at the Cleveland-based equipment manufacturers, Snow Dragon, whose industry-leading snow melting equipment was strongly featured. I’m betting many public works commissioners and facilities managers visited their web site on that glorious day.

And that’s the problem. Coming to that web site, these folks, who are probably very interested in the industrial-strength snow melters the company proudly builds, would discover the only way to get details about the products is through their navigation bar, which has only one word to help: Products. (There are other things on the bar, like Online Resources and Events, News, & Video, but that’s not why these guys were there. They were there to see the products.)

The trouble with code words

You’d think a word like Products is exactly what the visitors would be looking for, since they were interested in the products the company sells. However, if you asked these folks why they were coming to the site, “products” isn’t likely to be a word they’d use. They’d be more likely to use something like “snow melter”, since that’s what they want.

The thing is Snow Dragon doesn’t sell anything other than snow melters, with clever names like SND580 and, my personal favorite, the SND-RM90. That’s their entire product line. Why use the code word of Products?

Given the lack of anything else that smelled like products on the page, it’s likely the visitors wouldn’t feel the pain too much. They are smart people (after all, they read the New York Times) and they’d figure it out. Yet, all that thinking is getting in the way of something that could be much easier: delivering the user to the snow melter of their dreams.

The wrong terms

Years back, we at User Interface Engineering did a little experiment. We asked folks to search for information and items on sites they’d never been to. In advance of showing them the site, we asked them what terms they thought described what they were seeking, then we asked them to go to the site and find what the items. After they either completed the task or gave up, we went back to the site’s home page and counted the number of times the users terms were on that page.

On the sites where the users’ terms were present in the navigation, those users succeeded about 72% of the time at finding what they were seeking. Yet, on the sites that didn’t mention the users’ terms at all, those users only succeeded 6% of the time.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that a city works commissioner is thinking Products when they are dealing with a major snow disposal crisis. Yet, that’s what the Snow Dragon site offers them.

Snow Dragon isn’t the only site that does this. GE.com has a link that is just called Products & Services, as does Oracle.com. Black & Decker has Products & Accessories. (I guess because they don’t see themselves in the service business.)

Intel divides up their site’s main navigation into For Business, For Home, and Products. Under For Home, there’s a subcategory of Products. Under Products, there are three categories of products — Intel Products, Products with Intel Inside, and Product Lookup. (Interestingly, in the subcategories under For Business, there’s no mention of products. I guess they don’t have any products for business.)

The right terms

Products has become so overused that it’s almost meaningless these days. It’s a catchall category that doesn’t really help the user find what they want. It’s a step away. Some companies are smart enough to avoid this trap.

VerizonWireless.com uses Phones & Accessories. Sony.com uses Electronics, Playstation, Online Games, and Music & Movies — a nice selection of what they offer.

Verzon Wireless and Sony offer more descriptive navigation.

Weber.com, the grill manufacturer (small-scale snow melters?) has an ambiguous pair of links Explore and Grill Out. Fortunately, on their home page, they feature pictures of all their grills, making it easy to avoid the navigation.

Weber.com: confusing navigation, straightforward content.

Desperately seeking specifics

What could a company like Snow Dragon use instead of Products? I’d vote for Snow Melters, since that is what they sell.

HP’s Palm.com site has Touchpads, Phones, Applications, and Accessories on their navigation panel. Apple.com has Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iTunes.

HP Palm and Apple: the products *are* the navigation.

Maybe Snow Dragon could use Office Park Snow Melters, Municipal Snow Melters, and Airport Snow Melters to help their customers find the right product? Anything that drives the design would probably work really well. It has the added bonus of driving up your SEO results, since those terms are more likely terms someone would type into a search engine. (It’s unlikely anyone would ever type Products into the search engine just to find a snow melter.) The search engine spiders love top-level navigation, giving those terms extra page rank love, so it’s a win all around.

Hiding behind a generic label of Products doesn’t do you any favors. The closer you can get to what your users are seeking, the more likely they’ll find it.

Pitfalls to Avoid

Don’t hide your most valuable assets behind generic links.
Avoid copying the design of your site’s navigation from other sites, especially those that have nothing to do with yours.
Don’t create a deep, multi-click navigation multi-click navigation path to get to the things the users want right off.

Things to Do

Spend time listening to your users and pick out the words they use for what they are looking for on your site.
Feel free to surface as much of your content as you can in your navigation.
Think about what drove them to your site in the first place. Have you made it a puzzle to finish their objective?

How are you making sure your content isn’t hidden behind generic labels?

Discussion

Thoughts posted: 21
Tell us

5 years ago, Aaron Gustafson said:

I completely agree that we should be more explicit in our labeling, but I always find myself having a hard time coming up with more explicit labels when the contents of a given section of a site are only generally related. For the Snow Melters, it’s easy, but our web design firm offers a host of services ranging from strategic planning all the way through to development and we’ve always felt like “Services” was a lame way to categorically organize these things, but have had a hard time coming up with anything better than “Services” or “What We Do.” I’m curious what others have done in the same situation.
5 years ago, Dan Cederholm said:

Great insight, Jared! Further proof that copy/content IS interface design. Navigation labeling being perhaps most important based on your examples. Off now to review all nav labels I’ve ever created…
5 years ago, Mary Branscombe said:

I think a lot of this goes back to the brochureware of Web 1.0 thinking; a ‘Web presence’ was a flyer, not a conversation and the people designing and putting up the site weren’t necessarily the people who would have a conversation with customers. Identifying what the people who come to your Web site will be wanting seems to come so far down the design spec (way after ‘get a logo’ and ‘do well in search results’) but unless you know who you’re talking do, how do you know what language will be meaningful to them? Unless you’re really clear about what you want your site to do (sales? advertising? customer education? service and support? Floor topping AND dessert wax?) you’re not likely to have something that makes sense. Let’s hear it for librarians and other information professionals who could be great resources for this…

Arelated example; as a journalist I visit a *lot* of sites looking for: press contact details, company head office location, news releases, image libraries and a few other specific things. I could save a ton of time if there was a best practice way for companies to present this information; some use Press, Media or News as a way to link it, but often News is for general news and the media information is buried somewhere underneath the About page. Shouldn’t we have clearer semantic guidelines by now!
5 years ago, Josh Channings said:

Maybe I think differently about content structure, but if I go to a manufacturer’s website and I don’t see “Products” in the navigation, it usually takes me longer to find what I want.

I don’t disagree that a product-centred website should treat the products as first-class elements and display them prominently throughout the site, but I personally wouldn’t want to throw away that mental muscle memory that expects a “Products” button somewhere obvious.
5 years ago, njbair said:

On a recent project I updated the website for a business networking organization. The “crown jewel” of the website was an interactive US map containing links to network members. Interested parties were told, “go to our website and check out the map.” But the word “map” appeared nowhere on the front page, let alone in the navigation. They had also obscured the links for donating money.

@Aaron, each of those services should have their own navigation link; at least the ones that are likely to be “search terms.” For example, individual links for “Site Design”, “Strategic Planning”, and “Application Development”, even if they all lead to the same landing page, will improve your SEO and click-through.

While we’re at it, hide “about us,” unless what you sell is autobiographies.
5 years ago, Dan Rubin said:

Language is so important — it’s too easy to forget that we are designing, planning, and building for communication. I try to get clients thinking about who the words are actually for, and to realize there’s a difference between internal and external vocabulary (this goes for organizations and industries alike).
5 years ago, jmbertucci said:

A good post. And while I agree with Jared Spool on this topic, I’d like to put a little discussion on the topic.

First, one thing Steve Krug would tell us is: “Don’t Make Me Think”. Term “Products” is pretty universal. Indeed, this article reinforces this idea with so many big name companies using “Products” (and counters well with cleaner solutions).

In the Snow Dragon example, if a visitor is coming with the question “I’m looking to buy a snow melter for [my need]” and [my need] can be for a business, airport, school, or whatever, I don’t think it’s the menu label “products” that is doing the disservice here.

While it might require a little more thought than is necessary for the visitor to think that “Products” is his next step, I think it’s when you hover over “Products” and get a list of ambiguous part numbers that smacks the visitor up against a brick wall of “where do I do now?”

The only option at this point would be to click each product link until they find what they’re looking for, if they’re willing to go that extra step. That’s where the real disservice to the visitor happens.

My point is simply that I wouldn’t necessarily vilify a site for using “Products” as a menu item because I don’t agree that it’s that counter-intuitive but I do certainly agree with working towards doing something better it as the article suggests.
5 years ago, Randall Elliott said:

Thanks for this Jared! It will be so nice to have a well written article, on a respected site, to point stakeholders to when debating this topic.
I really like what Mary said above regarding “brochure web” and making it more conversational. Often times I wonder if the labels should be more action oriented. What are your potential customers going to do with those products? Then can you place that in a sentence without being totally awkward sounding. I want to grill. I want to hike. I want to feel better. So much more compelling!
On another angle I would love to do some A/B testing using Google analytics around this by randomly sending some visitors to a generic nav and others to the improved version. Would be nice to have some real numbers.
5 years ago, april barrett said:

This gave me insight into a UI problem I’ve been dealing with for the last couple of months. It seems so obvious a solution but it never occurred to me that simply changing the navigation language - diverging from the norm - would solve the problem so easily. Thanks for a great article.
5 years ago, Alexander Stevens said:

Ginny Reddish talked about writing customer focussed content in this virtual seminar from UIE. (http://www.uie.com/events/virtual_seminars/content2/). She describes identifying the questions users will have in their minds (closely related to their tasks) - like ‘what services do you offer?’, and using those to divide up the page. I guess from that you go go a step further and apply the same thinking to sections.

This seems to compliment the user experience methods of identifying tasks and journeys and mapping content to them.

I still struggle a little with this approach as to whether you should pose the heading as a question (ie What services do you offer?) or answer it (ie Services we offer)? Still not 100% clear on that.

Also in trying to do the same on a large tour operator website I’m involved with I’ve inevitably ended up having to shoehorn large amounts of content together that answer various questions. And again I’ve ended up with a more generalised section of ‘About stuff’. Maybe the answer to my own question is that I should have tried harder to keep the content/sectioning distinct.
5 years ago, russelltope said:

yeap,an UI problem made me crazy before the solution you guys talked here.
5 years ago, Jared Spool said:

@jmbertucci said “one thing Steve Krug would tell us is: “Don’t Make Me Think”. Term “Products” is pretty universal.”

Here’s the thing: it’s so universal as to prove meaningless.

I’ve now watched thousands of people visits websites like these. Rarely do they come to a site without knowing specifically what they want. (The only folks I met who do this regularly are web designers, interested in the design of the site, not the contents.)

Folks don’t come to a random site asking “What services do you offer?” or “What products do you have?” As @jmbertucci said, they come with the idea “I’m looking for a way to get rid of all this snow in my factory’s parking lot.”

The home page is really a very large space. Yet, we often try to hide our most important assets (the things we do and offer) in just a portion of it.

If we can bring out our value, by not hiding behind universal terms that have lost their meaning, and say, “Snow melters for large parking lots” and “Snow melters for airport runways”, we’ll serve our customers best, get better placement in organic search engine results, and probably sell more of our universal products.
5 years ago, Jared Spool said:

@Aaron: About those “services”

How many do you have? Are they the essence of what you offer?

Why not create top-level navigation that says, “Strategic Planning”, “Training”, “Site Development”?

If those things you do are what makes you who you are, why make it generic so that it looks like what everyone else does?
5 years ago, matt heine said:

This is more a question than a statement as a result of the discussion. Our website offfers a range of investment “products & Services” - do you think perhaps “Wealth Solutions” might be better or is this too generic ?
5 years ago, Jared Spool said:

Matt, I’m betting that if we listed out your product and solutions and looked at what you ended up with, you could come up with terms that would give a much better flavor of what you offer. Remember, it doesn’t have to be just one option. Think Apple’s iPod, iPad, Mac, and iPhone.
5 years ago, matt heine said:

We are hoping to address this in our new “mega menu” structure but need a menu anchor to get there which has ended up as “Products & Services” … will review the secon tier none the less. thanks
5 years ago, Jared Spool said:

Matt, I don’t think a mega menu will solve the problem. It still hides the content behind the generic label of Products & Services.

Think of breaking that menu up into logical chunks. That’ll probably work best for you.
5 years ago, Subigya Shakya said:

I think it is really interesting conversation. Most of the sites will use products and/or services or and/or both and everyone will follow. There can’t be a packaged solution for all companies on this.

For the SnowDragon site, the confusion is doubled when each product is labelled by a “can be anything” number which doesn’t describe the product in any way.

A good research on the target clientele should provide more narrowed down and custom options aside from the generic ones. For the more generic audience, generic classifications should work fine IMO.
5 years ago, Marc Jones said:

Good article Jared, raises some important considerations.
With many clients trying to divide their sites into 15-20 headings I always tried to keep my entire top-level structure to 4 or 5 sections (including about and contact) as I thought that would lead to simplicity. Instead it can often force you to generalise titles to accommodate diverse content and therefore confuse users.
I guess the solution is to have primary navigation for the important stuff (your products or services, however many they may be) and then relegate the general stuff (about, contact) to a separate, secondary navigation menu?
5 years ago, Pedro Pereira said:

Late for the party, sorry.
@Marc Jones, I wouldn’t consider contacts a “lesser” item, specially when, still, so many of us like to have someone holding our hand when trying to find the right product/solution for us.

@Subigya Shakya: The problem with generic is the sometimes it overlaps itself. Take Asus website:
Looking for a notebook? They have the following classes : Business, Gaming Powerhouse, Multimedia Entertainment, Special Editon, Superior Mobility, Versatile Performance.
And of course, inside of each class you have stuff like the P42 Series, the P50 Series… etc..etc… etc…

Small short tips on cryptic “products” would be great:
“SND900 - to melt between xx & yy tons of snow”

Sadly, I know many web professionals will have someone telling them “can’t do that, that would require 2 lines of text and wouldn’t look good, let’s stick with: SND900”.
2 years ago, remidavid said:

yeah i agree, we should be more explicit in our labeling.

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