Monthly Archive

"Solutions" as a primary navigation item.

I recently had a meeting with a prospective client, a software company looking to make some strategic changes to their site. They had previously organized their site by audience and were now looking to focus on their primary audience and bring their product content a level up. "We are thinking that we want the navigation to be "Products", "Solutions"...

What exactly is a "Solution"?

I have seen solutions as:

• product packages
• product/service packages
• hardware/software/service packages
• vertical-specific product packages
• vertical-specific case studies
• product listings for a particular audience
• product offerings for a particular business challenge

What do users think of "Solutions"

I had the opportunity a few years back to do a usability study for a large hardware/software/services company who also offered "solutions". In fact, the goal of the study was to see why a particular division's hardware/software/services offerings were failing to satisfy their users. Part of the problem? Yup, you guessed it... solutions.

We tested both engineers and business decision makers from large and small organizations and found that generally users don't know what to expect when they see the word "Solution" so most shied away from that area, opting to try repeatedly to find the information they sought in the Products area.