The category taxonomy serves as the backbone of a social marketplace for buyers and as a structure to which vendors assign their products. However, along with the top-level categories and the taxonomy segmentation for the website, the category taxonomy was tuned more for the company, leaving users - buyers and vendors - with poor user experience.
The category taxonomy serves as the backbone of a social marketplace for buyers and as a structure to which vendors assign their products. However, along with the top-level categories and the taxonomy segmentation for the website, the category taxonomy was tuned more for the company, leaving users - buyers and vendors - with poor user experience.
In the social marketplace, the content was structured based on what made sense to the company, not to the users, hence proving ineffective for both vendors and buyers. In addition, buyers were frustrated as the top-level categories displayed a generic list of products. Besides, as the taxonomy segmentation was inconsistent, it was difficult for the users to find what they wanted.
Consequently, the company that owned the social marketplace decided to redesign it so that the social marketplace was organized in a manner that matches the user’s mental model. Further, to ensure that the redesigned version was user-friendly, the company decided to make card-sorting - a User Experience (UX) research method - an integral part of the redesigning process.
The company chose the card sorting method as it helped uncover how the target audience’s domain knowledge is structured and it serves to create an information architecture that matches user expectations. Furthermore, the company decided to use the open card sorting method because they wanted to find out how users grouped the social marketplaces’ content.
While card sorting was a useful technique in identifying groupings, the company decided to leverage the tree testing methodology to test and validate the hypothetical hierarchy generated by the card sorting exercise. This helped the company understand the user navigation pathways, which in turn shed light on the hierarchy and placement of information under the groupings.
By conducting a worthwhile and compelling comparative analysis, and deploying card sorting and tree testing methodologies, the company was able to identify user needs and the way they relate to a product. Using these three methodologies the company was able to determine the users’ mental models of the category taxonomy.
Card sorting and tree testing helped differentiate between what users said they think and what they thought. The research in turn enabled the company to build effective, realistic, and user-centered category taxonomy for its social marketplace.
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