Global Navigation Strategy and Governance
Nondisclosure Agreement
Examples of this work have been heavily redacted to comply with the client’s nondisclosure agreement.
Project Summary
A shipping company needed to update their global navigation’s strategy and structure.
As the project lead, I successfully delivered a new navigation structure that could scale to meet the needs of regional markets while maintaining consistency. Our team also crafted a comprehensive set of “Rules for Belonging” that provide guidance for making decisions about the global navigation.
Key Deliverables
Qualitative A/B testing
Structural prototype of the final navigation structure
A set of “Rules for Belonging” to govern the new navigation structure
My Role
I was the project lead for this work. I was also a primary contributor.
Timeline
August 2023 - May 2024
This project was divided into three phases:
In phase one, we aligned stakeholders on their goals for the global navigation and determined a high-level strategy.
In phase two, we completed an in-depth analysis of the current global navigation, created Archetype user models, and conducted generative, moderated interviews with users.
In phase three, we began prototyping updated navigation structures and testing them with users.
This client operates in many countries around the world, and each country has a unique set of product and service offerings. This meant that each country’s global navigation featured a different selection of content. Since the global navigation did not have a clear owner, decisions about what to include were being made on an ad-hoc basis.
Our goal was to design a new navigation structure that could be deployed consistently across all markets. The new structure should also adhere to a consistent strategy while allowing users to complete key tasks on the site.
User Research
When creating a new navigation structure, there was a clear strategic problem we needed to solve:
How could we create a global navigation that would put key user actions front and center, while simultaneously highlighting important informational content?
We created two structures to test with users. Each structure surfaced a different hypothesis for how we could solve this strategic problem.
Structure A hypothesized that users wanted to see all of the information on a particular topic in one place. It accomplished this by separating each menu between action “buttons” and informational links.
A screenshot of Structure A. The drop-down menu has informational links on the left and action buttons on the right.
Structure B hypothesized that users would want to have actions and informational items located in separate areas within the global navigation. It accomplished this by limiting the items in each topic menu to action links and placing all informational links in a separate menu called “Resource Center.”
A screenshot of Structure B. Each topic menu only includes corresponding action links, while the Resource Center heading houses all informational links organized by subtopic. The subheadings under Resource Center map to the primary menu headings.
We conducted two rounds of qualitative research to compare the performance of Structure A and Structure B. Each round consisted of 45-minute moderated interviews with customers who represented three key customer personas: shippers, recipients, and business customers.
In round one, we interviewed 15 participants to test a set of hypotheses about Structure A. In round two, we interviewed 13 participants to test a set of hypotheses about Structure B. Each interview was a 45-minute moderated interview conducted over Zoom.
After completing both rounds of interviews, we compared results and found that participants strongly preferred Structure A over Structure B.
A side-by-side comparison of hypothesis results from round 1 of research with Structure A (left) and round 2 of research with Structure B (right). Each row represents an individual participant, and each column represents a hypothesis.
Green means our hypothesis was true and users liked the prototype we showed them. Yellow means the hypothesis was neutral and red means the hypothesis was false.
After we completed A/B testing, we updated Structure A to reflect user feedback. Then, we completed a third round of moderated interviews with the updated prototype, Structure C, to test our refinements. We interviewed 14 participants in round three.
Our hypothesis results in round three were very similar to our findings in round one, reinforcing our overall finding that the updated structure reflected in Structure C would be an improvement compared to the existing global navigation.
A screenshot of Structure C. Here, the action buttons have been moved to the left side of the drop-down menu and informational links have been moved to the right side. A subheading, Learn About, has also been added above the informational links.
Rules for Belonging
With our new structure in place, we began working on a set of “Rules for Belonging” that would give the client a set of consistent decision-making criteria that could be used to govern the global navigation once the new structure was in place.
The Rules for Belonging serve three main purposes:
They articulate the global navigation’s scope by documenting the components of the global navigation.
They provide consistent decision-making criteria for deciding what belongs in the global navigation.
They provide clear guidance for where information should be placed within the global navigation.
The full Rules for Belonging feature a set of questions that can be used to decide whether something belongs in the global navigation. The example below shows how the Rules for Belonging would be used to determine whether the Returning a Package link belongs under the Ship menu on the site.
Step 1: First, we would ask questions to determine whether this item belongs under Ship as a topic. In order to belong in the global navigation, the answer to at least one question must be yes:
Does this give users the information they need to decide which shipping service best fits their needs?
Does this provide users with information they need to know to ship effectively?
Does this allow users to initiate a new shipment?
For our example, we could say that the answer to the second and third questions are yes, so this item is a conceptual fit.
Step 2: Now, we have three more questions to ask in order to determine if this item is a high enough priority for the global navigation. In order to be included, the answer to at least two of the questions must be yes:
Does this drive revenue?
Does this meet a key customer need?
Does this bring awareness to a product or service that’s a strategic priority for [the company]?
Returning a package drives revenue and is a key need for customers. In this case, Returning a Package is a high enough priority to be featured in the global navigation.
Step 3: Lastly, we need to decide whether the Returning a Package link should be presented as an action link or an informational link. In order to be featured as an action link, the answer to all of these questions must be yes:
Does this take users directly into a task sequence?
Is this both a high-value and high-frequency task for users?
Does this take users to an application or a third-party site?
In this case, the answer to question one is no, so this link cannot be included as an action link. However, to be featured as an informational link, the answer to at least one of these questions must be yes:
Does this teach users how to complete a task they’re unfamiliar with?
Does this provide more details or in-depth information about a product or service?
In this case, the answer to both questions is yes.
According to the Rules for Belonging, the Returning a Package link should be included in the “Ship” menu as an informational link.
Project Impact
When we began this work, the client wanted to establish a product ownership mentality around the global navigation. At the end of this work, we had planted the seeds for this organizational shift by:
Articulating a clear, comprehensive vision for the global navigation.
Designing a navigation structure that could accommodate the core needs of all markets.
Validating a strategy for effectively presenting both actions and informational content in the global navigation through extensive user research.
Establishing universal decision-making criteria to guide the global navigation as it evolves over time.
We also left the client with a clear roadmap for next steps at the end of this work. These included conducting tree testing to verify the effectiveness of menu headings and labels, incorporating elements of the new navigation structure into their design system, and creating a quantitative benchmarking framework for measuring the global navigation’s performance.