Global Navigation Redesign

Every market, from Canada's English and French sites to Belgium's three-language storefront, runs through the same global navigation. That shared structure is what made the friction expensive: nothing elevated a promotion without touching the wayfinding every market relies on, and there was no rule defining where promotional content was supposed to live versus where core navigation had to stay untouched.

I designed rules for exactly where promotion was allowed to live in the navigation, then built dedicated slots to hold it. Promotion no longer squeezes into whatever space core navigation didn't need that week, it has a defined place, with hierarchy, spacing, and interaction patterns held constant so it reads the same whether it's a global campaign or a regional one.

Every flyout, New & Featured, Women, Men, Kids, Custom, Launch, Sale, follows the same split: a stable wayfinding column on the left that doesn't move for any campaign, and a numbered Featured Collections module on the right with its own required slot count and character limits on headline and body copy. Sale and Gift Guide links only appear in the top-level navigation when there's an actual business case for them, a live sale assortment, an active gift season, not by default.

Emphasis is rationed the same way color is: never used in the top-level navigation for Custom or Sale, never used when inventory is low, and limited to one colored link per page, so a promotional push can't visually compete with everything around it.

The same navigation also has to work for a guest who's never signed in and a member three orders deep, without turning into two different systems. Signed out, the nav surfaces Sign In and a Create An Account panel with a GEO-specific value proposition, capped at 100 characters, title case, so the pitch matches what actually matters in that market. Signed in, that same slot becomes a personal greeting and a real account menu: orders, favorites, saved designs, addresses, communication preferences.

Help works the same way. Support links aren't one hardcoded list for the whole world, each GEO configures its own FAQ and contact links independently, so a guest in Western Europe sees support content relevant to that market instead of a translated version of the US experience.

The same pattern showed up in every market's session data: shoppers abandoned a wayfinding task mid-navigation whenever a promotional takeover ate into primary nav space, regardless of language or region. That pattern, not a stakeholder's preference, is what justified giving promotion its own slots instead of letting it compete for the same visual weight as core categories.

Teams elevate promotions by dropping content into an existing slot instead of opening a new navigation project every time. Wayfinding stays consistent for every guest regardless of which market or promotion they land on, and the placement decision that used to come with every campaign launch is a rule that was decided once, not something remade from scratch each time.