The Staples Redesign and the Ink & Toner Tab
August 13th, 2005
We were excited the other day to find that Staples.com redesigned their web site. One of the reasons for our excitement is that we’ve user tested their web site in the past and now we have something different to compare our results to.
The other reason is that we often use Staples’ homepage as an example when we talk with clients, because they do something that most other companies don’t. Instead of hiding their hierarchy behind a small number of tabs or links on their home page, they expose a great deal of it, using valuable real estate that is often reserved for branding purposes.
Here’s a screenshot of their new homepage, taken today:
Staples continues to use much of their homepage to expose their product categories. This makes sense to us because we’ve seen this approach succeed rather well for users who want to zero-in quickly on what they’re looking for.
Something else interested us about the redesign, too. We were surprised to see that the designers at Staples created a new top-level navigation bar that included a tab labeled “Ink & Toner”.
In the new nav bar, “Ink & Toner” is put on the same level as “Products”, of which it is obviously a subset. This clearly shows that the designers made an important distinction with this product category, giving it higher precedence (and deviating from the hierarchy) by placing it on the top level.
We soon discovered, however, that this design decision might not have been quite the distinction that we first supposed. Take a look at OfficeMax.com. They have an “Ink & Toner” tab, too.
We’ve seen this before. Many design teams, tasked with creating a site that directly competes with similar web sites, often copy features from each other. The general impression is that if your competitors are doing something you’re not doing then they know something you don’t. Better to copy the feature and catch up than to leave it out and risk losing whatever it is they’re gaining.
However, we’ve seen the opposite to be true. We’ve seen those teams that focus directly on their customers succeed the best. After all, there is some reason why they are customers of one company and not the other. A design that reflects that differentiating reason will keep them happier, longer.
In this case, however, we happen to know that Staples rigorously tested this version of the home page with their own users, including the interesting “Ink & Toner” tab. We have it on good authority that this tab is helping their users, not hindering them.
So, even if the Staples design team created the “Ink & Toner” tab because Office Max had one, it’s OK because they’ve made sure that it works for their users. If they had copied it only for fear of missing out and had not tested it, then they would potentially be designing for the wrong customers. And if they came up with it independently, then just as well.
