Auditing a Big Catalogue Page
Pages that list hundreds of items, products, articles, courses or games, live or die by how quickly a visitor can find the right group. Here is how to review one.
Why catalogue pages are hard
A catalogue or overview page has to serve two people at once: the visitor who knows exactly what they want, and the visitor who is browsing. The first needs search and clear labels; the second needs sensible groups and a reason to look further. Most problems come from serving one and forgetting the other.
Check the categories with card sorting
Card sorting is a technique in which people organise topics into categories that make sense to them, and in some versions name those categories. Write each item or sub-category on a card and ask a few people to group them. If they keep creating groups you do not have, or splitting one of yours in two, your menu reflects the organisation's view rather than the visitor's.
A five-point review
- The groups are visible at once. On a phone, can a visitor see all top-level categories without scrolling far, or at least a clear way to jump between them?
- Labels mean the same thing to everyone. Brand or internal names for categories confuse newcomers; plain descriptive words work better.
- Each group shows a sample. A few representative items help people decide whether the group is worth opening.
- Filtering and search exist for long lists. Nobody wants to scroll through hundreds of tiles.
- The way back is obvious. After opening an item, visitors should return to the same place in the list, not the top.
An example to practise on
It helps to review a catalogue from an industry you do not work in, because you notice structure instead of content. Entertainment sites are a good exercise, since they often list a very large number of titles. One example in Traditional Chinese is a game overview page from an online casino brand that organises its titles into categories (夜色娛樂城遊戲總覽). Try the five checks above on it: how quickly can you tell what each category contains, and how does the layout behave on a narrow screen? The exercise is about the page's structure, not about the games themselves.
A note on gambling. If gambling has stopped being entertainment for you or someone close to you, talk to someone. In the US you can call 1-800-MY-RESET; elsewhere, look for a local support service. Set limits before you play, never chase losses, and treat any money spent as the cost of entertainment. See also problem gambling.
Write findings the team can act on
For each issue, note the screen size, the category or element affected, and what a visitor would expect instead. Screenshots with one arrow each are more persuasive than paragraphs.
If people in your card sort cannot agree on a group's name, the group itself may be the problem.
By Iris Calloway · last checked 2026-11-09