Magento – Making The Most of Layered Navigation
Something that may go unnoticed for many Magento developers is the layered navigation section that appears in the <?php echo $this->getChildHtml('left') ?> call. The information that this provides should be very prominent on the page as it makes your site much easier to browse through for a customer, meaning they’ll reach the product they want faster, meaning you’re more likely to make a sale.
The script reads important information about your products such a:
- The sub-categories they’re in
- The price ranges they fit in to
- Attributes that separate them such as colour and manufacture
This means it’s very worthwhile creating as many attributes for your products as you can so that a browsing customer can narrow their search even further as the attributes of all the products filter down. This also increases a product’s prominence in a store search. For example if you add the attribute manufacturer and give a section of your products the value ‘Sony’, this will provide pretty much a new sub-category called ‘Sony’ in your layered navigation, as well as make all those items come up in a search for Sony in the store search.
For more about how to use Layered Navigation, watch this video and start enjoying its benefits.
Nice information on creating layered navigation in magento, thank you for sharing it.
Yup, actually you are right. But it’s always depends on the exact project. I’ve seen the projects with 15 filters, that completely brakes the design. So, you should find a kind of golden middle in terms between user-experience and design.
Great thought and I appreciate the video tutorial. Further I agree that there is a balance to be made between too many filters and offering your customer the fastest way to find what they are looking for.