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I'm trying to find the best way to re-organize solutions and products information for users. This is a very common organization focused classification system but as such can be confusing to many users unfamiliar with a company's products. Here are some issues to consider and potential ideas. Would really love some help from the community. here's the site for reference: http://www.cleverdevices.com/index.htm

Issue: Biggest issue (as mentioned above) is users unfamiliar with the company will not know, inherently, what products will solve their problems due to internal naming conventions.

While Products & solutions have potential for good cross linking and taxonomies, I can see potential for pogo-sticking between both of these categories since they're very similar.

Some ideas: It occured to me that users come to the site because they have a problem that needs solving, therefore Solutions should be the first entry point which could then contextually surface up the associated product(s) that help solve that problem.

With that in mind, I am considering removing products from the primary nav. This presents 2 problems.

  1. Client would most likely balk at the idea of hiding their products
  2. Users who "are" familiar with the company need quick access to the products (eg: they may not need to consult solutions)

Looking for any help or real world examples of other companies who do a good job of organizing this type of closely related information.

thanks in advance gary

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  • Still hoping for some insights here
    – Gary Jay
    Commented Jul 16, 2016 at 12:23
  • Please correct me if i'm wrong, I checked CleverCare and CleverCare_solutions content are same. You can use 'Products & solutions' and divide the layout into two section "Product with image" and then "Solutions" cleverdevices.com/CleverCare.htm, cleverdevices.com/CleverCare_solutions.htm
    – Sourabh Rangdal
    Commented Jul 17, 2016 at 15:42
  • No you're only looking at one page (Clever Care), not the entire category groups under solutions and productions. You also coincidentally chose a subject matter that is duplicated in both solutions & products. Take a look at all content under both categories
    – Gary Jay
    Commented Jul 17, 2016 at 16:57

2 Answers 2

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Please correct me if I am wrong, if we are providing Solutions for Products then they have to be together. Also, please check this example https://au.pinterest.com/pin/180284791312397308/ 1. Products only, 2. Solutions only, and 3. Products with Solutions.

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We've thought about this a lot, and this answer is essentially a brief overview of how we solved this problem.

Get rid of "Solutions"

I've tested this on a number of occasions (with Crazyegg heatmaps and equivalent click mapping in GA) and found that users generally don't click on or use this menu item. I don't have data that proves why, but I'm assuming it's for the same reason I wouldn't click on that item - because 'solutions' sounds like "sales-marketing-speak". As terms go, it's less concrete and more abstract. It's unclear, just from the term, what I should expect when I click.

Use 'Products' and sub-categorize under that

'Products' is a clear and concrete term that users will understand. How you subcategorize will depend on your customers and how well you understand them.

We went with "By business type" and "By category", the latter just being logical groups of products based on their functionality or technology type.

(here's our product page, where you can also the the main menu, minus the 'Solutions' item https://www.globalsign.com/en/products/)

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