A Badge of Honor for Hobby Lobby

I have a tendency to bring up ecommerce filtering a lot in this blog. You could say bad filters are a pet peeve of mine. Nothing frustrates me more when I’m trying to browse on a site than a lack of refined options! It’s so nice to find a site that gets it right, which is why I’m giving a Badge of Honor to Hobby Lobby.

Too often, I see sites that have the same filters on every page, no matter what the products are. Most of the time, they’re pretty standard. Refine by price range, brand, color, or size. What I like about Hobby Lobby is that they go the extra mile. Every section on this site has category specific filtering options. Here are a few examples to illustrate my point. Check out the Brushes section under the Artist Supplies category.The Sub Categories list the different types of brushes. Plus, there are filtering options for the bristle material and the brush shape. Nice!

Here’s another one: the Apparel Fabric & Prints in the Fabric & Sewing category. Again, relevant sub-categories, with additional filters for collection, fiber and theme.

One last example, just to drive the point home. Under the Wedding & Floral category, I clicked on the Ribbon & Floral Decorations section. I like the filter for Ribbon Type, and especially for Ribbon Width. This isn’t just a standard Size filter with a bunch of numbers dumped in, but a very specific filter with only the sizes that pertain to these products.

The key word here, as far as I’m concerned, is relevance. How relevant are the filters a site offers? On each page, for each type of product, the filters should match the category. I have to give a tip of the hat to Hobby Lobby for going above and beyond. Filtering and refinement options that are relevant and specific like these are actually helpful to customers, and will increase conversions. It’s great stuff. Keep up the good work guys!

Have you seen other examples of great filtering in ecommerce? Tell us about them in the comments!