Best practice website navigation

We were recently asked to review a website for usability. One of the key pieces the client wanted to look at was navigation. Surprisingly, there’s not a huge amount available on the web about this. Even Jakob Nielsen, the guru of website usability is pretty quiet on the subject. So we pulled together a few thoughts and rules of thumb when it comes to creating a good website navigation:

Website users go to websites with goals in mind and perform tasks in order to achieve these goals. Information seeking is one of the most common goals on websites and especially intranets. Navigation is the primary tool for in-site information seeking. A good navigation makes for fast and successful information seeking.

Website navigation has undergone much standardisation over the years. Navigation bars, drop-down menus and sub-navigations are found across most sites, as are standard labels such as “home”, “about”, “contact us”, etc. Users sub-consciously expect sites to adhere to these standards. If sites don’t follow these standards, information seeking can be greatly impaired.

Secondary navigations (not to be confused with sub-navigations) are often missed and confuse users as to the categorisation, structure and priority of information presented.

Navigation labels should use concise and common language as this aids information seeking. Jargon should be avoided.

If you’ve got any any other navigation tips to add, please drop us a comment.

How can writing effective headlines and blurbs help visitors navigate your site?

Whether you run a public website or a secure intranet, you’re likely to use headlines to get people moving around the site and clicking through to other sections or pages. There are several reasons why it’s worth spending a little thought on them.

• As a navigation aid, explaining what the reader can expect to find when they click on the headline
• To entice the reader to click through, and use the site to the maximum
• To improve the number of hits from search engines
• To retain the design and balance of the page

But it’s difficult to measure the effect of good headlines in a systematic way, and as a result the usability gurus offering tips don’t necessarily agree in every respect. Very often, then, your judgement is based on experience and gut feeling.

Having said that, here’s some advice from Jakob Nielsen that’s worth considering:

• Headlines should be written in plain language: no puns, no “cute” or “clever” headlines
• No teasers that try to entice people to click to find out what the story is about
• Skip leading articles like “the” and “a”
• Make the first word an important, information-carrying one

And from Poynter, some tips on writing effective blurbs:

• They’re an aid to navigation, but readers only skim them
• Blurbs encourage reading and scrolling on homepages, but don’t necessarily encourage clickthroughs
• People focus primarily on the left third of the text in blurbs – get the keywords in that area

David Harbottle