Here's what I was thinking of doing...

Having Drop Down menus at the top of the page for our main categories / JEWELLERY / ACCESSORES / DESIGNERS

and on the left hand side having specific links people might find useful

i.e. search by color / make / price range /etc

- for specific events - evening wear / etc
- specific stones / message -. i.e. this stone = peace / etc
- recently added / etc.

but my boss thinks that we need to have all the items in the drop down menu + these special other options (like the advanced search via drop down option - specific links, etc, on the left hand nav as well...

thing is, i think we'll have wayyyyyyyy too many links on the left hand side, like 22 comprising of the price range / jewellery options / accessory options alone! once we get in the other stuff... it's really going to be a bit confusing for me - the person that made the store, let alone someone who just wants to quickly and easily get their stuff and go - but i do share his concerns re: people not knowing that they can see specific pieces of jewellery through the drop down menu at the top.

Another option i thought of was creating the drop down menu in the left hand nav.... i could fit everything in there, and still give people the option to do the same sort of breakdown - e.g. by color / designer / combination.. and then i'll just rename the link to something like 'find your perfect ... earring .. .necklace... in this color....pink...red...orange...green.... by this designer..... ralph.. gucci.. kenzo.... kristen

i'm so confused !

I have been wondering about this myself ever since I changed my site to have a link to all categories and subcategories in my left column.

My thinking was that it would be easier for the customers to find their way around and find what they were looking for. I like the way it looks and I think it is not confusing.

But when I ran one of this site analyzers the other day it came back and told me that I had "Way too Many Links", over 100, on my home page.

Now keep in mind this analyzer counts every link, nav links, text links, image links, etc. I tried to do more research on this and SEO, etc. but could not find anything to say if it really hurts me.

The yesterday I received an email from a customer telling me how they liked the site and how easy it was for them to get around and find what they are looking for. For now, I am going to listen to the customer.

We've been battling the same type of thing.
I keep telling myself that the least amount of clicks to get to a product, the better.
But who knows?
I think a re-work is in store for us. Just haven't decided which way to go with it though.

well.. we're gonna do a survey - see what customers want in return for a discount on their first order. (i have bright ideas once in a while!)

*goes to find a selection of her target market in order to survey them*

certainly simple navitation will improve conversion rates, there are soo many sites to choose from that no customer is going to struggle through confusing navigation.

Don't make customers think and don't make them work, make it as easy as possible.

I tired to do this but i could not get a successfull. One idea is to have all the links in the CATEGORY HTML that you have to include in all the subcategories.
Examples.
Jewelry has sucategories. So all the subcategories links should be included in the all the Jewelry subcategories. and similarly for all other main category.

I would go with that approach, if you try to stuff every sub category onto the page you run the risk of exposing your users to information overload.

One thing you can do is put each of your products on a card and get a few people to sort these into what they see as logical groupings - then look for patterns and use that as a basis for your navigation.

Sometimes what we think is logical is different then what our average user might think.