Designing a product-first shopping experience
decathlon
Decathlon's vision was to create an inclusive sports experience for everyone across the globe and this project was born out of that intent. We redesigned the navigation and product trees to help customers browse by sport or product category before filtering by attributes such as gender, size, or fit.
Challenge
In the traditional setup, users first had to decide whether they were shopping for men, women, or kids, even when their primary goal was simply to find the right item for their activity. The challenge was to redesign the information architecture using a product-first model that better matched how customers shop, while maintaining discoverability, supporting SEO requirements and scaling product catalogue efficiently.
Team
Sports and catalogue teams, country leaders, product design, research, product managers, engineering, localisation and program managers.
What I did
Designed the IA of the dashboard and global navigation
Reframed the navigation strategy
Developed the product-first navigation trees that reflected users’ mental models when they were browsing creating a more intuitive experience.
Developed a scalable content taxonomy
Partnered with cross-functional teams to define a consistent taxonomy for product categories, navigation labels, and filters. The new structure reduced duplication, supported localised terms, and made space for future product categories.
Validated the navigation through research and experimentation
We used tree-testing for the new product trees to understand the discoverability of the products and did a black-out test of the navigation with conversion as the primary metric.
Collaborated across disciplines to align strategy
Conducted workshops, reviews, and iterative discussions to align with all the stakeholders and define phases of development, testing and success metrics.
Work
Outcome
The product-first navigation was flat on conversion but positive on other secondary metrics like add to cart, PLP pages browsed, etc. We are currently iterating on a second version of the navigation to test again.
What I learned
Large-scale changes rarely happen all at once, and progress often comes through multiple rounds of research, testing, refinement, and cross-functional collaboration. This project reinforced that content design extends far beyond words.
