Today I wanted to show my jacket to a friend, so I looked it up on the manufacturer’s website. They make quite a few products and I, naturally, don’t remember the jacket’s “name”, so I figured I’d browse my way to it. Here’s how you browse jackets on this website:

(One long sidebar which I split into columns for legibility)

This UI suffers from the classic problem of thinking in terms of how the data is organized in the system, not how it’s modeled in the user’s brain. There are basically three kinds of filters in this sidebar:

The Brand’s Pet Names™. Things like Triclimate™ and Cryptic™. Unless you are very, very good at what you do and you’re very, very lucky, no customer will know these. Window-Shopping Assistants. If I’m just here to look around, the Staff Pick list might be a place I check out. But if I’m looking for something specific, it’s of no help. Subjective Descriptors. I see the thinking that went into creating the “Lifestyle” and “Climbing” filters, but I have no clue which one my jacket would fall into. Is it “Rainwear”? Sure, you could wear it in the rain… I suppose.

What do I, the user, know about the jacket I’m looking for? It’s black. It has 5 outside pockets. It doesn’t have a hood. It has an iPod pocket. It cost me $299. These are objective, easily recalled properties. Even if I weren’t looking for a jacket I own, but one I’d like to buy, these would still be more helpful than the “Performance” category.

Target.com is pretty good about this. Check out their filtering sidebar:

Note also that Target stocks far, far more items that the above manufacturer, and they’re not even their own products. Surely someone at the jacket company could tag their stock appropriately. It’s possible, however, that Target is far more objective precisely because these aren’t their products - they see them as just more stuff to catalog.

Two things to remember, then:

Just because your system uses a particular category (“TriFlexTip™-compatible”) doesn’t mean that this will be useful to the shopper. Let go of some of that company pride and only show actually helpful labels. If you don’t currently offer filtering options that would be helpful (such as color) make it happen - it’s not a pain, it’s an investment.

It’s a pretty good jacket, though. I just wish I could find it and show it to you!