Patent - Dynamic Graph Based Menu Navigation for Online Stores

When you have many product attributes on each product, presenting a multi layered navigation menu is not a trivial task, especially when stock levels change frequently rendering some choices trivial.

Creating a navigation menu requires a delicate balance between providing enough options to help users find what they are looking for, avoiding trivial choices that don’t filter the catalog while also not overwhelming them with too many choices at once.

The algorithm described in this patent explains how the full navigation graph can be transformed dynamically using an iterative prune-shirnk-promote procedure to guarantee giving the optimal set of options to the user at any given time, taking into account previous choices and available stock.