

Ask HN: Sites with the best search/browse UX - shedletsky

I am developing a B2B eCommerce site that will accommodate a wide range of asset types.<p>I am working on the browse&#x2F;search aspect of the site and trying to develop UX that will allow both usage modalities to happen on the same page.<p>I am not a professional UX designer and I am hoping to draw inspiration from other web sites. I am going for a sleek, modern, and mobile friendly feel (though for the best user experience I am willing to make 2 versions of the page, desktop and mobile).<p>Is there an eCommerce site that you feel totally nails searching and browsing from a UX perspective? If so, what key thing do they do better than other sites?<p>The two I use most often are Amazon and eBay, but in my opinion they are good at search but bad at browsing. I think Zillow is good-to-great with regards to browsing, but that may say more about the information compactness of maps vs text than anything else.<p>Is browsing UX a harder problem than search UX?
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thegrif
I think search is much harder than browsing. I think what you're seeing on
Amazon (and other sites) is that both search and browse is driven off the same
set of data. In other words, navigation is created on the fly based on the
products within each section. It doesn't matter whether you start by browsing
and then search or vice versa - you'll get the same navigational experience.

BestBuy does a bit better job with this - but they too are employing the same
strategy - they just don't expose the facets until you're two levels down in
the taxonomy. Which makes sense - because usually facets are going to be too
much if the user is too high in the taxonomy or brings back too diverse of a
results set.

Amazon appliances:
[http://www.amazon.com/Appliances/b/ref=nav_shopall_ha?ie=UTF...](http://www.amazon.com/Appliances/b/ref=nav_shopall_ha?ie=UTF8&node=2619525011)

Bestbuy appliances: [http://www.bestbuy.com/site/electronics/home-
appliances/abca...](http://www.bestbuy.com/site/electronics/home-
appliances/abcat0900000.c?id=abcat0900000)

Sears follows the BestBuy approach and alters it slightly by showing
iteratively more complex faceting options as you drill down.

Sears is broken down into ~30 departments:
[http://www.sears.com/en_us/sitemap.html](http://www.sears.com/en_us/sitemap.html)

For each department, they have a nice landing page to facilitate discovery of
their most popular sub-departments as well as a page that lists all the sub-
departments:

[http://www.sears.com/appliances/b-1020003](http://www.sears.com/appliances/b-1020003)
[http://www.sears.com/en_us/sitemap/appliances.html](http://www.sears.com/en_us/sitemap/appliances.html)

(as a note, I would wager that sitemap/appliances.html is purely an SEO
tactic)

Not integrated with the navigation is also the search results page for the
same data that drives all of the navigation throughout the appliances
department:

[http://www.sears.com/search=?levels=Appliances&catalogId=126...](http://www.sears.com/search=?levels=Appliances&catalogId=12605&storeId=10153)

From
[http://www.sears.com/appliances/b-1020003](http://www.sears.com/appliances/b-1020003):

Drill down into a product category and you get simple facets on the left:

[http://www.sears.com/appliances-washers-
dryers/b-1320301405?...](http://www.sears.com/appliances-washers-
dryers/b-1320301405?adCell=_HAWD)

For some popular sub-categories they have chosen to do landing pages as well.
Like for specialty laundry:

[http://www.sears.com/appliances-washers-dryers-specialty-
lau...](http://www.sears.com/appliances-washers-dryers-specialty-
laundry/b-1101268?adcell=_HA_sears_WashersDryers_SpecialtyLaundry)

The same results can be found here (in the search results interface):

[http://www.sears.com/search=?levels=Appliances_Specialty%20L...](http://www.sears.com/search=?levels=Appliances_Specialty%20Laundry&catalogId=12605&storeId=10153)

In the end though, you eventually hit the faceted navigation interface:

[http://www.sears.com/appliances-specialty-laundry-
centers/b-...](http://www.sears.com/appliances-specialty-laundry-
centers/b-1101274)

Home Depot has followed the same design approach - showing a level of detail
in the facets that tries to match whether the user is in discovery mode or has
the intent to purchase something specific.

As you can tell, I have spent way too much time thinking about and building
search results pages. Feel free to reach out to me - I'm @thegrif on Twitter
or linkedin.com/in/tomgriffin on LinkedIn.

