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Problem

Originally launched as a comparison shopping tool, the Shopping product needed to drive traffic to retail products, featured merchants, and other emerging advertising vehicles. The product needed to serve the needs of browsing customers as well as highly directed users.

Solution

I introduced promotional blurbs that were consistent enough to present a unified interface, but flexible enough to satisfy a diverse set of advertising needs. To help get more directed users right to what they were looking for, I used the left rail for categories and placed the comparison shopping tool near the fold.

I used subdued colors for Shopping's structural elements so that the promos would be the stars of the page. I also had a unique challenge with branding. washingtonpost.com was the dominant brand (delivered in a global navigation bar not included in my samples), and "Shopping" is a generic title. (Shopping pages were also required to support the same standardized ad units as the rest of the washingtonpost.com site.) So the header I designed is just strong enough to hold the page together (while incorporating a 468 x 60 ad unit) and still be weak enough to allow the main brand to dominate.