PHILIPS Navigation Audit
Skills: Figma • UX Writing
As a personal project, I audited Philips.com’s main navigation. I based the audit on a few key questions:
What are the most popular Philips products* that users search for?
Are Philips’ most popular products easy to find?
Is the current hierarchy user-friendly?
*I focused on Personal care and Mother & child care products which Philips directly controls. Philips Hue is no longer Philips-owned.
Main Navigation Reimagined
BEFORE
1) Sonicare toothbrushes and Norelco shavers are Philips’ most popular items, however they are hidden under “Personal Care”.
2) “Household products” does not make sense as the second category. The categories are also not in alphabetical order.
3) “Health” is too broad a term. Additionally both “Health” and “Personal Care” contain “wake-up lights”. This link should be in only one main category.
4) “Accessories” could become a subcategory under categories where it’s applicable. Again, the term is too broad.
5) “Promotions” navigations to sale items and discounts. There could be a better word for this, like “Deals”.
6) Many categories have their own homepage. It would be beneficial to have each category text clickable to a homepage. Currently clicking a main category opens the category menu.
AFTER
I split the items in “Personal Care” into three sections:
1) “Oral healthcare”.
2) “Grooming & beauty”.
3) “Health” (for wake up lights).
4) I changed “Promotions” to “Deals”.
5) I combined less popular categories into a “More” section to avoid clutter.
6) Categories can now be clickable and go to a homepage.
Personal Care Reimagined
BEFORE
1) Users would be confused by the terms “Sonicare” and “electric toothbrushes”, both terms could be used interchangeably. Users may ask “What’s the difference?”
2) Language and text cases are inconsistent with “Men’s grooming homepage” and “Male Grooming”.
3) Spare parts could be considered accessories, therefore why not in the accessories category?
4) “Personal Health” subcategory doesn’t fit here. The same category is in “Health” main category, which is where it should only be.
5) Sustainability could be it’s own main category. The text “Refurbishment” is unclear and “Refurbished Shaver” would make more sense as plural.
*Bonus* Multiple pages’ title cases are inconsistent.
AFTER
1) I cleaned up the OHC section and chose to put a decision page as the first link with a generic term of “all toothbrushes” to avoid confusion.
2) I organized non-toothbrush related items into their own subcategory.
3) I made “Accessories” its own subcategory.
*Bonus* For any link that wasn’t a Philips brand name I made sentence case.
AFTER
4) I wanted to show how I’ve made subcategories clickable to go to a specific homepage.
5) I put “Refurbished shavers” under “For Men” and made it plural. I also cleaned up the “For Men” section and renamed links to be more simple and easily understandable.
6) I included an “Accessories” subcategory for blades and spare parts.
*Bonus* For any link that wasn’t a Philips brand name I made sentence case.
Mother & child care reimagined
BEFORE
1) Language is unclear and inconsistent with “Mother & child care” as Main category and then the Subcategory is “Babies & Toddlers”. Where is “Mother”?
2) Perhaps users would be confused between all of the products and the term “Avent”.
3) There is no clear order hierarchy for the links.
AFTER
1) I organized links into “For Babies & Toddlers” and “For Mom”. (Note that “For Mom” is still inconsistent with “Mother” however “For Mom” is consistent with Philips Avent’s friendly persona.)
2) I moved extra items to “More”.