Navigation that lost its way
CNET’s navigation had drifted from its core job – getting readers to content – into a commerce-driven menu. The most common complaint in user testing was simply that people couldn’t find what they were looking for.
Findability was failing the business
A navigation that hides content doesn’t just frustrate users; it caps engagement and starves the high-value pages the business depends on. I framed the redesign around three goals: support findability, follow SEO best practice, and still route readers toward high-value pages.
Product Design
I owned the navigation redesign end-to-end, partnering with UX research, SEO, and engineering – synthesising research, standardising the system, and defending the trade-offs with stakeholders.
What testing told us – and what we did
A 30-person card sort rebuilt the taxonomy; 12 unmoderated 30-minute sessions – ages 32–62, an even gender split, on both desktop and mobile – sharpened the interaction model.
Turning a spreadsheet of links into a system
Subcategories ranged from 0 to 17 links, so I built one scalable template: 12 links in three columns, room to feature two high-revenue articles, and a trending module: clear by column, and easy for engineering to maintain. On mobile, it collapses into a dropdown to cut taps.
The template also had to earn its keep with search: before wireframing I consulted our SEO lead, and three principles from that conversation are baked into its structure.
Keyword optimisation
Categories and links are named with terms that actually rank on Google.
Order matters
Top-level topics run from most to least important – crawlers weight position.
Stay flexible
CNET’s coverage is broad and uneven – the template flexes because no topic is the same.
Midnight or daylight? Let users decide.
The design team leaned toward a dark treatment, but users had asked for a nav that stands out. Instead of guessing, I prototyped both and ran them head-to-head.
Midnight
A bold dark treatment the design team favoured for its contrast and drama.
Daylight
A lighter, greener treatment users found clearer and easier to scan – and the one we shipped.
What shipped – and what it moved
The lighter “Daylight” treatment shipped across CNET’s global navigation. Every subcategory now follows one template (12 links in three labelled columns, two featured high-value articles, and a trending module), and the menu opens on hover, so readers reach what they came for in a single, predictable motion.
In the first month after launch, page views per session rose 32% (1.24 → 1.64), measured in site analytics. Before launch, 12 unmoderated usability sessions validated the design: participants found the article they were given quickly and confirmed the 12-link cap and the lighter treatment. Just as important, editorial and engineering gained one scalable pattern to maintain instead of dozens of one-off menus.
What I learned
Interactions rose at launch, then flattened months later, a reminder that shipping is the start of the measurement, not the end. I left with a backlog of hypotheses to test, from colour changes to a sticky nav.
The hardest call was defending UX over cramming in every high-revenue page. Holding that line – and learning how structure and keywords drive SEO – is exactly the prioritisation a PM has to own.