The document summarizes a presentation by Jenny Benevento and Abby Covert on navigation as a brand at Etsy. It discusses the history of browsing at Etsy from 2005 to present day and the purposes of navigation. It also outlines lessons learned from experiments changing Etsy's category navigation, including that brand decisions should not be made by audiences and short term neutrality can enable longer term efforts. Data was analyzed on the impacts of navigation changes on sales and search engine optimization.

1. IA Summit 2018 | Jenny Benevento & Abby Covert
Put a label on it!
Navigation as brand

2. Jenny Abby

3. A Brief History of
Browsing at Etsy
2005… the beginning!

4. 2006
2007
2008
2009
2010

5. 2006 2008 20092007 2010

8. 2011
2012
Early
2014
2013

9. Late
2014
2015

11. Purposes of Navigation
● Explain brand
● Market features
● Provide access to administrative tools
● Display the taxonomy
● Advertise products & sales
● Surface thematic or seasonal sections
● Orient users throughout their journey
● Get users to products
● Inform search engines
● Inspire users
2014
2005

12. Wayfair Casestudy: http://www.mvestormedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Alex-Stein-MozCon-2016-Boost-SEO-Rankings-by-Removing-Internal-Links.pdf

13. We had 692
Internal Facing
Links…
ON EVERY PAGE

14. Round 1: Reduce the Footer by 50%

16. Data! Data! Data!

17. Set Completion

18. Seasonality

20. “If I am murdered,
blame a dollmaker.”
- @jennybento

21. - A prospective buyer exploring the navigation
Everyone at Etsy
“It seems like more of a mass
department store because of all the
choices that are there... it reminds me of
JC Penney because they also have
clothing, furniture, home decor…”

22. Things you never hear at your job that we hear all the time:
“Is there any way we can
downplay nipple jewelry a bit
more.”
- an executive

23. Etsyness

24. Bringing in
Design & Engineering

25. Until November of 2017:
ETSY DID NOT HAVE
MOBILE CATEGORY NAVIGATION

26. Getting it Online

27. Remoteness
Works

28. So
Many
Tabs

29. ...despair

30. Experimentation

31. Watching it over time
Nav Launched 100% across desktop and mobile

32. Tradeoffs & Balance
Onsite customer (UX)
Statistics
Our teams goals
Vertical
Taxonomy
Offsite customer (SEO)
Etsyness/branding
Other teams
Vertical
Marketing

33. “What if sales tank in
categories removed from the
navigation!?!”
“Categories removed from the
navigation continue to grow due
to more search engine strength!”
Perception Reality

34. 5
Lessons
Learned

35. Lesson 2
“When something touches every part of
the product, everyone will care about it in
theory and no one will care about it in
practice”

36. Lesson 1
“When something starts as a project, it
will need other projects to maintain it”

37. Lesson 4
“Short term neutrality is a good goal for
longer term efforts to be deemed safe”

38. Lesson 3
“Brand decisions shouldn’t be made by
your audience”

39. Lesson 5
“You can get a lot of work done under the
guise of someone else’s objectives”

40. Thanks!
jenny@etsy.com
@Jennybento
acovert@etsy.com
@Abby_the_IA