Tips for Building Website Navigation

Organizing and choosing the correct navigation text can make it easier for visitors to find content on your website. This blog will talk about methods to create user friendly navigation.

While having well thought out website navigation cannot guarantee repeat visitors to your website, having bad navigation can reduce your repeat traffic. According to Forrester Research, 88% of survey respondents said a website's "Ease of Use" is a factor in continuing to shop on a site.

Organize Your Content

Information Architecture is defined in the BusinessDictionary.com as how a website's content is organized and presented to its users to facilitate navigation and search functions

That sentence is very simple, but can be complex or confusing to implement. Here is a simple but affective method I have used to organize websites.

The Card Game
Often referred to as card sorting, this simple process can help you organize your content. You will need:

• A set of Index Cards
• 15 potential customers or users of your website (test audience).
• Video camera or someone really good at taking notes.

 You are going to write down your web content on the index cards, give them to the test audience and record how they organized the cards.

1. One each card, write down the name and a short description of the main pages of your website.
   
   
   • Be careful not to use potential navigation names on your cards.
2. Mix the cards and give them to your test subject.
3. Give them to your first test subject, and ask them to sort the cards into piles, placing cards that belong together in the same pile.
   
   • If you have a deep site with lots of content ask them to group the piles into larger groups.
4. Ask your tester to provide names or descriptions of the groups and piles.

Use the video camera to records steps 3 and 4. If you don't have a camera, take notes about the names and descriptions of the groups and piles of cards. Make sure you record what cards are placed in what piles.

When recording which cards are in a group, you want track which cards are grouped together and how often. Sometimes called similarity scores, if two cards are always grouped together their score is 100%. If two cards are placed together by 10 testers and in different piles by the other 5, then their score is 66%.

Anything that has a score of 70% or more I prefer to group together, when building a website's navigation. Items with a lower score will need your judgment to determine what goes together.

Warning: Sometimes you will not get groupings over 70%, because people approach problems differently. For example, if you are trying to organize products:

• Some people will organize items by physical characteristics. Placing all tubing or sheeting into their own categories.
• Some people will organize items by what they are made of. Placing natural or synthetic items in their own category.

Now take a look at the names people gave to the piles and groups. They should be your starting point for navigation text. These words are not the final words you pick for links, but they give you a good starting point.

Next build a mock up of your navigation show it to 3 - 5 people who are likely to use your website. Ask them to what they would do to look for certain content (based on your original index cards).

• Do they click on the correct navigation link?
• If not ask them what they think of when they read the link you placed the content under.
• Why did they look where they did and not under your link?

Keep in mind that this is an "art" not a science. There is no best way to build your websites navigation. Planning, testing and monitoring can help you avoid the bad navigation schemes and let you find one of the many better methods to organize your websites content.

Tips On Creating Your Website's Navigation

Navigation should make it easy for users to find what they are looking for.

Are you redesigning your website and want to improve the sites organization and navigation? This article will give you some simple tips on how to set up your navigation.

Avoid These Mistakes

Here area few common mistakes people make, that are easily avoided.

• Using icons or images instead of text.
• Choosing words that are not commonly used by your customers.
• Having different navigation on different pages
• Hidden Navigation
• Not telling users how they got to your page, or where it fits in the navigation.

Using icons or images instead of text:
This is often referred to as Mystery Meat Navigation. Any navigation scheme that does not visually inform your visitors with words where they will go if they click on something qualifies as Mystery Meat. If your site uses images, but shows words when a user mouses over the graphic it is still mystery meat.

The Fix:
Use words to tell people where navigation links will take them.

Choosing words that are not commonly used by your customers:
Sometimes we get so caught up in or own corporate world. This can affect what we assume about our website users. If your site uses terms that are jargon used by your staff, but not the general public they should be replaced with general terms.

Use simpler words where appropriate. I worked for a client who used the term "Career Opportunities" as a navigation tab. The number one internal search term on their site was "Jobs"; over 25% of searches looked for that term. Changing the tab to "Jobs" significantly reduced searches for the word jobs.

The Fix:
Choose common words from your audience in navigation. Avoiding jargon or corporate culture phrases.

Having different navigation on different pages:
Nothing confuses users more than changing navigation. I am not talking about moving the navigation up closer to the top of a page, or altering the color of a link to show that the user is in that section of the site.

Users get confused when the order of links change, or when the text on links varies from page to page. Make sure your navigation is consistent.

The Fix:
Be consistent review your site to make sure all pages have the same navigation.

Hidden Navigation:
People are used to navigation being on the top, left or right side of a website. Do not place it on the bottom of a page, bury it in content.

The Fix:
Make sure your navigation is easy to use and find.

Not telling users how they got to your page, or where it fits in the navigation:
This is referred bread crumbs. Many sites with lots of content do not tell people what section of the site visitors are in. If the visitor likes your what they are reading and want to look at similar content, not telling them where they are makes it hard for them to find related pages.

Why is this important? Remember that people can get to pages deep in your website by searching Google and then clicking on a link.

The Fix:
Include breadcrumbs on your website.

A Pet Peeve - Dates
This is not related to navigation, but is a general issue with page content. Many pages do not indicate when they were created. This is not an issue with product pages - as I assume that they are current. But news / information pages should have a date (at least a year), so I can tell if I am looking at a page created in 2000 or 2010.

What Content Goes on a Website's Home Page

Are you not sure what should go on your home page? Picking content for your website's home page is important.

One of the dangers is that you put too much information on the page and visitors do not know where they or or what actions to take.

Unless you are a household name (Google or Disney) here are some basic pieces of information every home page should have.

1. Company name / logo prominently displayed.
   The upper left corner of your web page has been the "standard" location for years.
2. Phone Number
   Some people say it should be in the top section of the home page to be easily visible. Others say the footer is a good spot. I prefer the top (if your site's design allows) and also in the footer.
3. Physical Address
   Usually in the footer. The exception to this rule is if you have multiple locations. But if you are a small business serving one city / region with only a few locations I'd put display your main office's address in the footer.
4. Search Site Button
   If your site contains lots of content, make it easy for people to search for what they need. The upper right corner of your web page has become the standard location.

All of those items might sound obvious to you. But I still run across a site every couple of weeks that is missing one of those elements.

Keep content on your home page to a minimum.

This is not the place to tell everyone about how long your company has been in business, nor how many years of experience your employees have.

Keep your content brief, talk about your products or services in general terms, try to use some of your SEO keywords here.

Remember to keep your home page organized so people visiting your site for the first time know what to do next.