very pretty left nav, volkswagen

Pretty, space-efficient, and easy to use navigation. Volkswagen UK (via Findability.org)

if you need that many words…

If you need a tooltip explaining the main navigational element on your site, you either don’t trust your users’ intelligence or didn’t do a very good job of designing it. Also, if you need that many words to explain it, you’re in even bigger trouble.

search state, wigix

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.

amazon chocolate left nav, another deeper hierarchies example

Amazon has an example of a different way of giving quick access to deeper sub-categories. Instead of having a Milk/Dark/Other navigator a user would have to get through first in order to see deeper subcategories, they broke them out into separate search facets in one navbar.

deeper hierarchies

Example of category + subcategory hierarchies combined together in one facet navigator.

found on Agilent (also powered by Endeca)

guardian jobs – left nav

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.

guardian jobs – listing display options

- Interesting display of individual listings — condensed, succinct.

- You can switch to “descriptive” listing style (I like the wording of “compact” vs “descriptive”).

guardian news search left nav

The guardian.co.uk has a smooth and clean search interface. Their search is powered by endeca.