Some input into site navigation

I'm in the process of putting together a new site and the products are ones that have many brands, most of which are well known by consumers. I'm just wondering the best way to do the navigation so people can shop by brand easily. Obviously I will include a search by brand function, however,

1. Just have a drop down list of all the brands,

2. A table of say 6x5 with links for A, B, C, D etc and then list the brands on each of these pages

3. Include one or two from each letter and a more link underneath to lead to the page for all brands start with A, B, C, D etc

We're talking hundreds of brands so there are too many to list all of them.

Usability plus SEO need to be considered here. What do people prefer when they already basiclly know what they are looking for and aren't really window shopping?

Thanks in advance.

 

IMHO if you use a drop down list [in whichever way] you piss people off - the classic is select a country - always United States is at the top, as a special listing, and United Kingdom is 10 miles down with the real listing of the US! It takes forever! Do the US think that the UK is not that important? etc....

I would tend to take the client to a page where all the brands are displayed [logos and text] in a logical default order which can be sorted by name, popularity, type, goods, etc They need to see/find the logo - the brand image.

 

Foxy, agree with you on the country thing. At least Australia is towards the top and I think it is about 10 presses of the A key to get there.

Hadn't thought about trying to incorporate the logo. Good idea and would help scanning through the names I'm sure. Just need to make sure I can use them without pissing off the owners.

 

What's the best way of doing that? Can it be done in PHP?

 

and how will that affect googles bot that checks for cloaking?