Navigation Menu Improvement
- Paula Costa
- Apr 8
- 3 min read
Updated: May 26
Enterprise | Gofind |
Focus | Usability improvement |
1. The problem
The Gofind portal is a platform with several performance features for our customers. It allows you to view analytical data, demand data, product management, among others. However, it has always had so many features and the number of offers that customers could purchase and access quickly evolved. So the old menu brought some problems for its evolution.
2. Interviews
In addition to the problems found through the usability analysis, we conducted some interviews with users to discover other issues. Here are some points that we listed as most common among users:
Non-global terms
We discovered that the platform used terms that some users only knew through training. For example, "Breakthrough Map" (maps submenu) or "Prospecting", which users understood by different names, such as opportunities or leads.
Hidden features
Since the menu previously had little space, the developers placed some functions in a way that would fit into some kind of context of the main menu items.
Example : In order for users to post products on Google, they correlated them with products and placed the function within the products menu. However, users always resorted to support to indicate the path to them, or to leave the URL saved in the browser. Intuitively, it was not possible to find it.
Forgotten features
There were features within the portal that were not used or even offered anymore.
3. Research
Feature mapping
The objective of this stage was to understand user behavior within the portal in order to guide strategic product decisions. I conducted a comprehensive survey of all available functionalities, identifying which were most used, which had low adoption, and which could be discontinued or optimized.
How we did it: We used the MixPanel tool to analyze metrics such as:
Most visited pages
Average navigation time
Main actions performed
Engagement rate per functionality
Based on this data, we created a usage ranking that served as the foundation for defining improvement priorities and focusing on the next phases of the project.
Cardsorting
We conducted a card sorting activity with users to validate and propose a new organization of the portal’s functionalities. Using the Miro tool to facilitate the sessions, participants showed us how they expected to find each functionality, grouping them logically and intuitively, including suggestions for submenus.
Our main goal was to ensure that the new navigation structure caused minimal impact on the current experience, while making the layout clearer, more organized, and easier to use.
4. Solution
Expandable and compact menu: To make the experience adaptive, we added the possibility for the user to compact the menu. In other words, it would be open by default, but the user could choose to compact it to have better visibility of graphs and tables.
We created submenus to better segment the functionalities according to the results of the cardsorting tests.
Iconography to facilitate communication and recognition of features.
5. Tests
The tests were conducted with Gofind's internal users and real customers, in individual remote sessions with screen sharing. In total, 3 recruited customers and 5 internal users participated .
Methodology
1. Identification of icons. We used card sorting so that users could associate meanings with the icons and we evaluated visual clarity.
2. Assisted navigation with missions. We create scenarios to validate the usability of the interface and clarify doubts about its intuitiveness, focusing on:
Intuitive understanding of the menu compression function.
Ease of locating frequently accessed menus.
Possible interface flaws that impact the user experience.
Clarity in navigation through submenus.
Understanding the settings menu.
Results and adjustments
The tests performed well, but we identified opportunities for improvement:
Some icons needed to be redesigned for clarity in context of use.
The menu collapse functionality was not intuitive for some users, leading to the implementation of an animated tutorial displayed on first navigation to explain this interaction.
6. Development
After final adjustments, we documented an interactive design manual for the front ends.
Interactivity rules : Explaining in written and visual form how the user's action behaviors would be.
Contents of each sub-menu .
Dark mode version .
Adapting interfaces to the new menu : Some screens needed to be standardized, such as titles, breadcrumbs, spacing and navigation.
Examples for documentation. Full material is restricted.