DESIGNING NAVIGATION

<aside> 💡 People won’t use your Web site if they can’t find their way around it.

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Web Navigation 101

1. You decide whether to ask first or browse first

   In real life if you want to get direction, you either find it yourself or ask for directions.

   The difference is that on a Web site there’s no one standing around who can tell you where things are. The Web equivalent of asking directions is searching—typing a description of what you’re looking for in a search box and getting back a list of links to places where it might be.

   Users can be:

   • Search-Dominant
   • Link-Dominant

2. If you choose to browse, you make your way through a hierarchy, using signs to guide you

   

3. Eventually, if you can’t find what you’re looking for, you’ll leave.

The unbearable lightness of browsing

1. No sense of scale:

   This is one reason why it’s useful for links that we’ve already clicked on to display in a different color. It gives us some small sense of how much ground we’ve covered.

2. No sense of direction:

   In a Web site, there’s no left and right, no up and down. We may talk about moving up and down, but we mean up and down in the hierarchy—to a more general or more specific level.

3. No sense of location:

   When we want to return to something on a Web site, instead of relying on a physical sense of where it is we have to remember where it is in the conceptual hierarchy and retrace our steps.

   This is one reason why bookmarks—stored personal shortcuts—are so important, and why the Back button is the most used button in Web browsers.

   It also explains why the concept of Home pages is so important. Home pages are—comparatively—fixed places. When you’re in a site, the Home page is like the North Star. Being able to click Home gives you a fresh start.

<aside> 💡 Navigation isn’t just a feature of a Web site; it is the Web site,

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The overlooked purposes of navigation

Two of the purposes of navigation are fairly obvious: to help us find whatever it is we’re looking for and to tell us where we are.

1. It tell us what’s here.

   By making the hierarchy visible, navigation tells us what the site contains. Navigation reveals content! And revealing the site may be even more important than guiding or situating us.

2. It tells us how to use the site.

   If the navigation is doing its job, it tells you implicitly where to begin and what your options are. Done correctly, it should be all the instructions you need. (Which is good, since most users will ignore any other instructions anyway.)

3. It gives us confidence in the people who built it.

   Clear, well-thought-out navigation is one of the best opportunities a site has to create a good impression

<aside> 💡 Have navigation appear in the same place on every page with a consistent look gives an instant confirmation that you’re still in the same site—Which is more important than you might think. (Persistent Navigation)

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Persistent navigation should include the four elements you most need to have on hand at all times:

1. Site ID