Navigation That Works
April 21, 2007 by Jeff Adams
It’s pretty obvious that if someone cannot navigate your website, they will leave it.
The most important issues facing the internet site are:
- Privacy (30.49%)
- Censorship (24.18%)
- Navigation (24.18%)
(Source GVU's WWW User Survey)
With Privacy, this is easily solved since you can put your privacy policy on your site.
Censorship is another issue for which your readers decide, and whether they perceive is or is not happening, but the navigation is down to the designer.
So as the one thing you do have control over – navigation – how do you know what works and what doesn’t? Well the answer is, as designers, we don’t. But there are some helpful things you do when implementing navigation. The easiest thing to do would be to get other people to take a look.
Get someone else to take a look
Find someone who isn’t connected with your company or with the site to look over it. What is easy to find? What did they find hard? Do all your buttons work, and is the sequence in between pages logical. Ask them what they liked and didn’t like about your navigation so that you can get a good idea of what is good or bad.
It’s important to remember that a hard to navigate site will drive people away from your site, and they won’t take the time to tell you about it. They will simply go somewhere else to find what they are looking for.
Navigation for users needs
Bear in mind that though you are designing the page to look good for you or your client, it is ultimately the user or the potential customer who is actually using the site.
A very good example of navigation is the Amazon website (www.amazon.co.uk) where they have their products clearly listed at the top – its almost like you are in a real shop with different departments.
To create navigation that works, the navigation should:
- Remain consistent throughout the site.
- Be easily learned so visitors don’t get lost.
- Be appropriate for the purpose of the site
- Support users goals and behaviours – e.g. what did they come to your site for.