Faith just sent me a link to endless, pointing to their faceted navigation. It’s a classical implementation in a left nav bar, but you can see that they put thought into each navigator specifically, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach. I haven’t used the site extensively yet, but it seems like it would work nicely.

Category navigator:

Brand navigator (multiple select as well as keyword search), color family, and shoe size:

Heel height and price:

One thing i’m not sure works well is their search state breadcrumbs. They are in the left nav, where you selected them instead of somewhere more visible.

A faceted browsing classic. NCSU Libraries search, powered by Endeca (via Findability.org)

search state is on top of results, the place to undo is in the left nav, where you selected it (see way at the bottom). wigix.

Interesting approach to breadcrumbs/search state in the left navbar. I like that it very clearly states “Expand” and has both a start again option as well as removing individual facets.

I also like that each facet navigator starts with “Narrow by:”. It might be redundant, but also might make each individual navigator more clear.

from guardian jobs.