eCommerce Navigation Best Practices for Magento Stores

If you think about the last time you bought something online, you probably had a rough idea of what you wanted, not much time to spare, and very little patience for a website that made you work to find it. You may even have thought to yourself, "It really shouldn't be this hard to find a cream knitted cardigan". Your customers are no different. Navigation is how they get from that first idea to the right product page, and when it works well, they barely notice it.

When it doesn't, most people won't get in touch to say they couldn't find something. They'll leave and buy from someone else. We've been building Magento websites since 2010, and navigation is one of the areas where small changes can make a noticeable difference to how easy a store feels to use. In this article, we share what we've learned about navigation on Magento and Adobe Commerce websites, from category structure and site search to filters, mobile menus and testing.

Why does navigation matter so much in eCommerce?

If shoppers can't find a product, they can't buy it. It sounds obvious, but a confusing menu affects your conversion rate, average order value (AOV) and the number of visitors who leave after a single page. That's why navigation is often one of the first things we look at in a UX or conversion rate optimisation (CRO) audit.

Navigation matters for SEO too. Your category structure shapes how search engines crawl and understand your website, and category pages are often the ones that rank for the broad search terms that bring new customers to you. A clear hierarchy with sensible internal links helps shoppers and search engines see which pages matter most.

The tricky part is that navigation problems are hard to spot from the inside. You and your team know your products well, along with all the internal names for them, so a menu that feels obvious to you can be confusing to someone arriving for the first time. That isn't a criticism of anyone. It's what happens when you know a business well, and it's why an outside view can help.

How should product categories be organised?

The best category structures reflect how your customers shop, which isn't always how your business is organised behind the scenes. A garden centre might manage stock by supplier or warehouse location, but its customers are looking for shrubs, bulbs or plants for a shady corner. Card sorting exercises and your own site search data are both good ways to learn the words your customers use.

Try to keep the hierarchy shallow; two or three levels are enough for most catalogues, and every extra level is one more decision a shopper has to make before they see a product. If a product could reasonably sit in more than one category, list it in both, rather than asking customers to guess which one you picked.

Clear, specific names help too. A label like "Collections" or "Essentials" leaves shoppers guessing, whereas "Dining chairs" or "Waterproof jackets" tells them what they'll find before they click.

If you sell to trade customers, your B2B eCommerce website will need some extra thought. Buyers often know the product code or part number they're after and want to reorder quickly, so quick order forms and search by SKU should sit alongside the category menu.

How many items should a main menu include?

There's no fixed number, but a menu with too many top-level items makes everything harder to find. Most eCommerce websites tend to work best with between five and nine top-level categories, with the detail tucked into a dropdown or mega menu.

Mega menus work well for large catalogues because they show the shape of a category at a glance. They do need clear grouping, readable headings and enough white space for someone to scan them comfortably. A long, ungrouped list of subcategory links can feel overwhelming, and a smaller, well-organised menu is usually easier to use.

It's also worth looking at what else is competing for space in your header. Promotions, account links, store finders and your blog all deserve a place, but they shouldn't push your product categories out of sight.

What role does site search play?

Plenty of shoppers skip the menu entirely and head straight for the search bar, especially when they already know what they want. You can make life easier for them by keeping search visible on every page. On desktop, that usually means an open search field rather than a small magnifying glass icon.

A good search tool is forgiving. It copes with spelling mistakes, plurals and synonyms, and suggests products and categories as someone types. It should never leave a shopper looking at an empty results page either, so show related categories or popular products to give them somewhere to go next. On Magento and Adobe Commerce, the default search can be extended or replaced with tools such as Adobe's Live Search, Algolia or Klevu (now known as Athos Commerce) where the catalogue needs more.

Your search logs are one of the most useful things you can look at. If people keep searching for a category that's already in your menu, they probably can't find it there, and searches that return no results show you where your product data or wording needs some attention.

How should filters work on category pages?

Filters, known as layered navigation in Magento, help shoppers narrow a long list of products down to the handful that suit them. The filters that matter will depend on what you sell: size and colour for clothing, dimensions and material for furniture, or compatibility for spare parts.

Only show filters that make sense for the category someone is browsing, and hide options that would return no results, as nobody enjoys clicking a filter to find nothing there. Shoppers should be able to pick more than one value, see which filters they've applied, and remove them one at a time without having to start again.

Filters need a little care for SEO as well. Every combination of filters can create a new URL, and without the right controls, search engines can end up crawling thousands of near-duplicate pages. The usual approach is to let a small number of useful filter pages be indexed and keep the rest out of search results.

What changes on mobile?

Mobile is likely to account for most of your traffic, and many of those visits happen in spare moments: on the train, in a queue, or on the sofa in the evening. Mobile navigation deserves the same care as desktop, and the biggest difference is space. A mega menu can't simply be shrunk down, so categories usually sit behind a menu icon and open one level at a time.

Keep the number of taps to a product as low as you can, and let shoppers step back up a level without closing the whole menu. Buttons and links need to be big enough to tap comfortably with a thumb, and search should be easy to reach from the header rather than hidden inside the menu.

Speed matters here too; a heavy menu that loads slowly on a patchy mobile connection holds up everything else on the page. As a Hyvä Gold Partner, we often recommend Hyvä themes for Magento and Adobe Commerce websites, as their lighter frontend makes fast, responsive navigation easier to build.

Do breadcrumbs still matter?

Breadcrumbs can often be overlooked, but are a small feature that shoppers appreciate. They show people where they are on your website and give them a quick way back to a broader category. They're particularly helpful for someone who lands on a product page from a Google search or an advert, likes what they see, and wants to browse similar products.

They also help search engines understand how your pages relate to each other, especially when breadcrumb structured data is added. As they take up very little space, there's rarely a good reason to remove them.

How do you know if your navigation is working?

Your analytics data is a good place to start. In GA4, look at how visitors move on from your homepage and category pages, how often they use site search, and where they leave. High exit rates on category pages, or lots of searches for categories already in the menu, are both signs that shoppers are struggling to find what they need.

Numbers only tell you part of the story, which is where user testing comes in. Sitting with a handful of customers and watching them look for specific products can be eye-opening, and problems often show up within minutes. Tree testing, where people look for items in a text-only version of your menu, is a useful way to try out a new category structure before any design work begins.

If you have enough traffic, A/B testing lets you compare changes, such as new category labels or a different menu layout, against your current version. That way, decisions are based on how your customers behave rather than on anyone's personal preference.

Good navigation needs ongoing attention

Your product range, your customers and your priorities will all change over time, and your navigation needs to change with them. Looking at your search terms, analytics and category performance a few times a year helps you catch problems early, before they start to affect sales.

If you'd like a friendly second opinion on your website's navigation, or you're looking for an experienced Magento and Adobe Commerce agency to help improve your store's UX, category structure, search and filters, we'd love to hear from you. Get in touch with the Develo team, and we can talk through what would make your store easier for your customers to use.