B&H Photo Video is one of the foremost suppliers for professional photo, video, and audio equipment. They sell through their physical store situated in New York City, and online through their website, http://www.bhphotovideo.com/.

Because B&H caters to a range of often gear-obsessed customers, the shopping experience is highly filter driven. The website has a grouping of categories with icons across the top of every page. The homepage consists of an almost redundant second set of pictures. Recently, I was shopping for a particular filter to fit a now obsolete camera. When searching for a product, one selects the overarching category (Photography), a sub category (Filters), and then a third level of categories (polarizing filters). After these three levels, the customer is finally presented with the class of products they are looking for. At this stage, while all the products are of the correct class, there may still be a huge number of options. This is where B&H’s powerful filter system comes into play. Because B&H is a specialty retailer, the filter system allows you to use unique attributes to find what you want depending on what you’re looking at. This system ensures that in 4 simple steps, you’re presented with a selection of exactly what you want.

From there, you can sort products by rating, selling, or price depending on what’s most important to you. Pick out a product, and you’re presented with a summary of the product, pictures (when available), an exhaustive list of specifications, reviews, suggested accessories, and an open Q&A section.

On the back end, the checkout system is intuitive and the wishlists are powerful. Getting what you want is as simple as any other online retailer. B&H’s mobile app mirrors this experience very well, providing the same fast, efficient system for finding products.

It’s clear that B&H know their products inside and out, and they use this knowledge to best design their website for customers. Their website is intuitive and makes good use of pictures. If you have any doubt what category your product is in, you can simply follow the illustrations. The visual design is very table-like – Categories are represented by tiled squares, each generally containing a picture and a label. Color-wise, the website is black on a white background, except for where an olive green color is used in the header, sidebars, and certain design elements.. This color livens up the page without being at all intrusive.

In my opinion, B&H Photo Video sets a gold standard for online specialty retailers. There’s nothing I would change about the commerce portion of the website.

Here is what I think other retailers could learn from B&H.

1. Know your products better than your customers.
2. Anticipate what your customers want to know, and provide it.
3. Help your customers get to what they want in the fewest number of clicks, without overwhelming them with options.