Global navigation: what the data says, and what to test
The nav is organised entirely by product type. Its order matches neither traffic
nor revenue, 72% of on-site searches are for a theme the nav has no
entry point for, and the single best-performing category page is missing from it. Meanwhile
75% of visitors land deep, never see the homepage, and have the nav as
their only orientation surface.
Discussion basis, not a launch plan. Nothing here is live and nothing has been built yet.
The six findings
- Nav order does not match revenue. Portraits and Video Tributes hold positions 3 and 4 on 1.9% of revenue between them. Programs, at 8.2%, sits in position 5.
- Menu length is inverted against demand. Keepsakes has the longest dropdown, 15 links, for 0.5% of revenue. Prayer Cards has 9 links for 56.6%.
- People shop by theme; the nav only offers product type. 72% of real on-site searches are motifs: beach, cardinal, sunset, celebration of life, Irish, floral.
- The best-selling category page is not in the nav. /c/98 is the 4th-biggest landing page on the site and has no nav entry.
- Mobile is the majority of traffic and a minority of revenue. 54% of sessions, 19% of purchases, and the entire nav behind one unlabelled tap.
- The nav's job is speed, not cross-sell. 90% of orders contain a single product type, so a bigger mega-menu is the wrong direction.
Finding 1 — nav order vs revenue
Each row is a top-level nav item, in the order it currently appears. Rev rank is
where it would sit if the nav were ordered by the money it makes.
| Nav pos | Section | Category views | Share | Revenue | Share | Rev rank | Drift |
| 1 | Prayer Cards | 88,881 | 46.2% | $304,081 | 56.6% | 1 | — |
| 2 | Posters | 39,017 | 20.3% | $145,332 | 27% | 2 | — |
| 3 | Portraits | 3,268 | 1.7% | $6,212 | 1.2% | 5 | 2 too high |
| 4 | Video Tributes | 1,462 | 0.8% | $3,686 | 0.7% | 6 | 2 too high |
| 5 | Programs | 24,784 | 12.9% | $44,113 | 8.2% | 3 | 2 too low |
| 6 | Bookmarks | 10,156 | 5.3% | $26,449 | 4.9% | 4 | 2 too low |
| 7 | Guest Books | 8,452 | 4.4% | $3,259 | 0.6% | 7 | — |
| 8 | Keepsakes | 4,667 | 2.4% | $2,618 | 0.5% | 8 | — |
| 9 | Packages | 3,177 | 1.7% | $1,912 | 0.4% | 9 | — |
Positions 5 to 9 are all under 5% of revenue and separated by fractions of a percent, so their
relative order is close to a coin flip. The defensible change is narrow: Programs up,
Portraits and Video Tributes down.
Finding 2 — menu length vs demand
Bar width is share of revenue. The number on the right is how many links that section spends on it.
Prayer Cards
56.6%
9 links
Video Tributes
0.7%
0 links
Keepsakes and Bookmarks together carry 23 of the nav's 67 links for 5.4% of revenue.
Posters carries 4 links for 27%.
Finding 3 — people shop by theme, the nav only offers product type
Real on-site searches only, from /search?q=. The GA4 view_search_results
event also fires on paid landing pages that carry a keyword= parameter, which makes
the raw term list look like a Google Ads report. Those are excluded here.
memorial cards198spanish146memorial card143purple130bookmarks128custom98collage poster93celebration of life91beach84jesus76floral72mary70collage68sunset64ocean55irish53angel49butterfly39cardinal38fishing37rose36golf35st francis33st jude33
theme or motif — no nav entry point product type — already in the nav
72% of on-site search volume is a theme, not a product type.
The nav offers nine product-type doors and zero theme doors. The only acknowledgement that themes
exist is the “Nature Themed” and “Celtic & Irish Themed” items repeated inside three separate
product silos.
Search sessions convert 6.3x better, and almost nobody searches
| Session type | Sessions | Buyers | Conv rate | Revenue / session |
|---|
| Did not use site search | 145,732 | 2,115 | 1.45% | $2.61 |
| Used site search | 4,777 | 439 | 9.19% | $11.27 |
Read this as correlation, not cause. People who search already know what they
want, so they were always going to convert better. It does not follow that pushing more people
into search produces a 6x lift. What it does establish is that the theme axis is how motivated
buyers describe what they need, and the nav gives 96.8% of sessions no way to say it.
The destination pages already exist
Product counts on the live search results pages, counted 3 Aug 2026. No new categories are needed.
Finding 4 — high-traffic pages with no nav entry
| Page | Views | Why it matters |
|---|
/c/98/best-selling-prayer-cards | 6,203 | 4th-biggest landing page on the whole site (4,250 session starts). H1 reads “Our Best Selling Prayer Cards”. |
/c/35/funeral-pamphlets | 1,601 | No nav entry anywhere. Closest sibling is Programs. |
/c/44/virgin-mary-prayer-cards | 282 | “mary” is also the 12th-most-searched term on the site (70 searches). |
Findings 5 and 6 — who is looking at this nav
Land deep, never see the homepage
75%
67,553 of 90,558 session starts. For them the global nav is the only map of the store.
Mobile share of sessions
54%
…against 21% of revenue. Desktop is 44% of sessions and 78% of revenue.
Orders containing one product type
90%
Sample of 500 transactions. The nav's job is speed to one category, not cross-sell. A bigger mega-menu is the wrong direction.
Sessions that use site search
3.2%
4,777 sessions. The box is in the header at 250px wide, prefilled with the string “Search products”.
Wireframe — current vs proposed
Greyscale, structure only. Mobile first, then desktop.
Mobile
Now
funeralprints.com☰🛒
Everything is behind the burger. No search, no category, no hint of what is inside.
Proposed (T6 + T4)
funeralprints.com☰🛒
Search memorial products
Prayer CardsPostersPrograms
Search visible without a tap. Three sections that are 92% of revenue, reachable directly.
Desktop
Now — 10 top-level items, 67 links
Prayer Cards9 Posters4 Portraits3 Video Tributes Programs7 Bookmarks8 Guest Books5 Keepsakes15 Packages Help6
Positions 3 and 4 (marked) hold 1.9% of revenue between them.
Proposed — revenue order, plus a theme door and Best Sellers
Prayer Cards9Posters4Shop by ThemeT3Programs7Bookmarks8Portraits3Video TributesGuest Books5Keepsakes≤5Packages Help6
Shop by Theme — every link is an existing /search?q= page
beachsunsetoceanfloralbutterflycardinalirishcelebration of lifeangeljesusmarygolffishingrose
Prayer Cards keeps a “Best Selling Prayer Cards” link at the top of its dropdown (T2). Keepsakes trims from 15 links to ≤5 (T5).
Test proposals
Every one of these is a DOM change to markup that already exists, deliverable as a PostHog web
experiment or a GTM Custom HTML tag. None requires site code, a new category, or new
copy. Ranked by ICE (Impact + Confidence + Ease, each 1–10, summed, max 30).
T1 [SITEWIDE] Reorder the top-level nav to match revenue
ICE 24 (7+7+10, /30) - What changes
- Move Programs from position 5 to position 3. Push Portraits and Video Tributes down below Bookmarks. No label changes, no new links.
- Why
- Portraits (1.2% of revenue) and Video Tributes (0.7%) hold positions 3 and 4, ahead of Programs (8.2%) and Bookmarks (4.9%). This is the same defect FP-112 is testing on the homepage tiles, one level up.
- How it ships
- PostHog web experiment. Reorder the existing children of `.fpLowerDesktopNavBar .navbar-start`. No site code, no GTM tag.
T2 [SITEWIDE] Add Best Selling Prayer Cards to the nav
ICE 24 (6+8+10, /30) - What changes
- Add a link to /c/98/best-selling-prayer-cards as the first item inside the Prayer Cards dropdown, above “All Prayer Cards”.
- Why
- That page pulled 6,203 views and 4,250 session starts in the window, making it the 7th-most-viewed category and the 4th-biggest landing page. It has no entry point in the nav at all, so returning visitors cannot get back to it.
- How it ships
- PostHog web experiment. Insert one `<a class="navbar-item">` into the existing dropdown.
T4 [SITEWIDE] Make the search box a placeholder instead of a prefilled value
ICE 22 (4+8+10, /30) - What changes
- The header search input ships `value="Search products"` with an empty `placeholder`, cleared by an inline onfocus handler. Move the string to `placeholder` so the field reads as empty.
- Why
- 189 searches in the window were literally “search” or “search products”, submitted without the default being cleared. A prefilled value also reads as a completed field rather than an empty one, which is the standard reason these get skipped.
- How it ships
- PostHog web experiment or GTM Custom HTML. One attribute swap on `#small-searchterms`.
T3 [SITEWIDE] Add a Shop by Theme column to the nav
ICE 21 (9+5+7, /30) - What changes
- Add one top-level dropdown at position 3, behind Prayer Cards and Posters, listing the themes people already search for, each linking to the existing /search?q= results page. The two proven sections keep the two best slots.
- Why
- 72% of real on-site searches are for a theme or motif, not a product type. The nav is organised entirely by product type, so it offers no path for the thing most people are actually trying to express. Sessions that find the search box convert at 9.19% against 1.45%, but only 3.2% of sessions ever use it.
- How it ships
- PostHog web experiment. All destination pages already exist and return products (verified 3 Aug: beach 62, sunset 61, celebration of life 61, irish 54, cardinal 21, butterfly 21). No new categories, no site code.
- Caveat
- The 6.3x conversion gap is correlational. Searchers arrive with sharper intent; surfacing themes will not transfer that gap wholesale. Treat it as evidence the axis matters, not as the expected lift.
T5 [SITEWIDE] Trim the Keepsakes dropdown
ICE 19 (5+5+9, /30) - What changes
- Collapse Keepsakes from 15 links to “All Memorial Keepsakes” plus the handful with real traffic.
- Why
- Keepsakes carries the longest dropdown in the nav, 15 items, for 0.5% of revenue and 2.4% of category views. Prayer Cards carries 9 items for 56.6% of revenue. Menu length is currently inverted against demand.
- How it ships
- PostHog web experiment. Hide the low-traffic children; the pages stay live and reachable from the Keepsakes landing page.
T6 [SITEWIDE] Surface search and the top three categories above the mobile hamburger
ICE 19 (8+5+6, /30) - What changes
- On mobile, put the search box and direct links to Prayer Cards, Posters and Programs in the header itself, rather than behind the burger.
- Why
- Mobile is 54% of sessions but 19% of purchases. Everything the nav offers sits behind one tap that gives no hint of what is inside. Those three sections are 92% of revenue between them.
- How it ships
- PostHog web experiment on the mobile breakpoint. Reuses the existing search input and the existing category links.
- Caveat
- The mobile conversion gap has many causes beyond the nav. This tests one of them and will not close the whole gap on its own.
Primary metric on all six is purchase rate, gated to a sitewide pageview since
the nav renders on every page. Revenue per visitor as the single secondary. Nav-click rate is
not a success metric: a nav change can lift clicks and cost orders.
Where the numbers come from
- Category views, revenue, device split, landing pages, search behaviour — GA4 BigQuery export
gtm-5z8b92d-zmqwz.analytics_355101599, events 1 May – 3 Aug 2026. Revenue is item_revenue on purchase events, bucketed by item_name; item_category is unpopulated on this property. - Nav structure — live DOM read of
.fpLowerDesktopNavBar on the homepage, 3 Aug 2026. 10 top-level items, 67 links. - On-site search —
view_search_results filtered to page_location LIKE '%/search?q=%'. Unfiltered, the event also fires on paid landing pages carrying a keyword= parameter, which inflates the term list with Google Ads keywords. - Theme page product counts — live fetch of each
/search?q= page, 3 Aug 2026. - Cross-category orders — 500-transaction sample, sections derived from
item_name. - Search box markup —
#small-searchterms carries value="Search products" with an empty placeholder, cleared by an inline onfocus handler.
No figure on this page is estimated, projected or borrowed. Every label in the proposed nav is
either an existing nav label, an existing page heading, or a search term visitors typed themselves.