Helping customers find their way

My retail background helped me think about this. In a physical store, the way products are grouped and displayed helps people understand where to go. Online, menus and collections have a similar role. Without someone standing nearby to offer help, those choices need to make sense on their own.

One question was whether to organize the headphones around their technology or around how people would use them. I was learning the differences between bone conduction and directional audio, but a visitor might arrive knowing only that they wanted headphones for swimming, work, or exercise.

That led me to work with two ways of exploring the range: Shop by Activity and Shop by Tech. Someone familiar with open-ear audio could browse by technology, while someone starting with a particular need could explore by activity. Both routes could lead to the same products, but they answered different questions.

Making navigation clear

The challenge was deciding how much information belonged in the menu. I wanted to make the choices helpful without making the navigation feel crowded. Even a short label required thought: would someone understand it immediately, or would they need to open the page to find out what it meant?

I also began learning how menus, collections, and product pages fit together. A menu link needed to lead somewhere useful, and the destination needed to match what the label had promised. I found myself following those links as a visitor would, rather than reviewing each page separately.

This was a different kind of work from simply adding content. It meant stepping back from what I already knew about the products and considering someone seeing the store for the first time. A structure that felt obvious to me could still leave a new visitor unsure where to begin.

AI helped me explore wording and compare possible ways to group the information. Having options was useful, but I still needed to choose what suited our actual range and check how it worked in the store. A suggestion only became useful once it helped someone move through the website more easily.

At this stage, these were decisions I could review and improve, rather than conclusions backed by customer behaviour. I was building a starting point and learning to question it. As the store developed, the navigation could develop with it.

The lesson was that organizing an online store is part of customer service. Clear navigation helps people take the next step with less uncertainty. My role was to make the products easier to find, starting with the needs and questions a customer might bring to the store.