Luigi Fulinello

[Brand] — Navigation Redesign

A phased redesign of a retail navigation system, shipped in the middle of a full headless replatform, that pulled category hierarchy back in line with the business and cleared the friction between browsing and buying.

The navigation was the part of the store almost every visit passed through — and one of the least examined.

It had grown by accretion rather than design. Categories sat in an order that no longer matched what people actually came to buy, accessibility gaps shut some shoppers out, and the structure leaked attention before anyone reached a product.

The timing made it harder. We had just kicked off a full rebuild of the entire e-commerce site as we migrated to a headless CMS, which meant there were few resources to dedicate to navigation on its own. So I scoped the work to live inside that constraint instead of competing with it.

We broke the updates into phases, which let us see results immediately after the first release. The first phase took the lowest-risk, highest-trust work: eliminating accessibility issues, improving hierarchy, and addressing the usability problems an audit surfaced.

Results — after the first phase

These came in before the premium visual phase shipped, on the structural fixes alone.

+4% Add to Cart rate, all customers
+21% Category page visits
+14% Home page visits
01

A hierarchy that didn't match the business

An audit revealed that the hierarchy of some categories, sub-categories, and products did not align with the priority of the business or the revenue it represented.

The order shoppers met first wasn't the order the business actually ran on. Using available product revenue data, I made recommendations to leadership that would better serve both customers and the business. Framing the changes in the revenue numbers they already trusted turned a design opinion into an easy yes.

Audit — where attention went versus where revenue came from.

Before As shipped
  • New Arrivals6%
  • Accessories9%
  • Apparel31%
  • Footwear24%
  • Home & Living18%
  • Sale12%
After By revenue & priority
  • Apparel31%
  • Footwear24%
  • Home & Living18%
  • Sale12%
  • Accessories9%
  • New Arrivals6%

Illustrative — replace with your real taxonomy and revenue figures.

02

A phased rollout that shipped value early

Rather than hold everything until the replatform was done, I sequenced the work so each phase could ship and prove itself on its own.

  1. 01

    Accessibility & usability

    Shipped

    Resolved the accessibility blockers from the audit and cleared the usability issues slowing people down. The cheapest win to ship — and the one that earned the trust to do the rest.

  2. 02

    Hierarchy & information architecture

    Shipped

    Reordered categories, sub-categories, and products to match business priority and revenue, then checked the new structure against how customers actually browse.

  3. 03

    Premium visual system & imagery

    Next

    A refined type scale, more generous spacing, and considered product imagery carried through the navigation. [Describe what you owned in this phase, and what it changed.]

03 The work

Product tile — [category].
Product tile — [category].
Product tile — [category].
Before — the legacy global navigation.
After — the redesigned global navigation.

04 What the phasing bought us

Ship the cheapest win first

Leading with accessibility and usability earned the early metrics that funded the harder hierarchy work.

Speak in the data leadership owns

Recommendations framed in revenue terms got approved without a fight.

Constraints sharpened the scope

Few resources forced ruthless prioritization — and a cleaner set of changes for it.

Close

The navigation shipped in phases against a live replatform, and handed off into the headless CMS as a structure the team could maintain and extend on their own.

The early numbers came from the structural work — before any of the visual polish landed.