This is how retail people think the category bar corresponds to aisles and shelves. Customers stroll the aisles (i.e. browse) to find the product they want.
Categories match up with internal structure as well, as individual people or whole departments are responsible for the products in each category. Performance of each category is measured individually and budgets and bonuses are produced.
The dirty little secret is most of e-commerce site traffic is driven by search. A good search function out performs category browsing. REI.com has a great search, for example.
About 8 years ago A/B testing starting to make retail marketing departments very excited. No longer would the whims of designers drive site decisions! We can test and pick the most profitable! We can prove that the most familiar appeals to the most common denominator! We can kill innovation, end risk taking and protect profits.
And that's the moral of the story - retail has a terribly thin margin and when your closest competitor is one tab away no one is interested in creating something new.
