Case Study

Taxonomy, Navigation & Faceted Search Assessment | JC Penney

 

Challenge

Improvements desired in product hierarchies and attributes based on best practices in taxonomy, appropriately structured to provide an optimal customer experience.

Assessment of how well suited existing taxonomies were to the Endeca IAP faceted search tool deployment.

Solution

Conducted heuristic analysis of department taxonomies (navigation and product attributes) against a list of 30+ best practices in structure, labeling, balance and leveraging of taxonomy.

Detailed analysis of search logs and external search engine data to identify key terminology and search patterns used on the company website and on the Internet at large, for specific shopping categories determined to be strategically important.

Competitive analysis to provide a broad understanding of industry terminology and navigation conventions, to identify whether the proposed taxonomies were in industry-wide alignment.

Results

Assessment report and final recommendations included rationale for improved category labeling and structural modifications to the navigational hierarchy in support of both navigation and search.

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