Web Navigation thoughts and unsolicited advice

December 09, 2002 | 0 Comments

Proper Website Navigation : Why you absolutely need it by Kiruba Shankar is an interesting, ah, rebuttal, I guess, to Is Navigation Useful? by Jakob Nielsen. Props to Digital-Web for the link.

When Neilsen said “For almost seven years, my studies have shown the same user behavior: users look straight at the content and ignore the navigation areas when they scan a new page.” in his Alertbox article. I thought, wow, that is quite a statement. I’ve noticed similar behaviors in my own experience with users, and yes, they do tend to focus on content.

Does that mean to do away with Navigation all together? Of course not, and for the record I’m pretty sure Neilsen isn’t saying that. What he does say is that Navigation is overdone on many sites. Too true.

There is a delicate balance that needs to be reached here. From my point of view the key is to know your users and design your sites to match their needs and merge them with the other goals of your site.

I’m working on a redesign for the hospital’s external Web site — a huge, huge undertaking — and we’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to understand what our users want and how best to balance that with our marketing and communications goals, organizational goals and the like.

When it came down to navigation, at one point we had thought about putting flyout menus in so that it made it easier to access that content the lived a bit deeper into the site. We’ve since re-thought that decision and pulled those flyouts out of the design. Why? Well, I feel like the IA of the site — which is where we spent the majority of our redesign efforts on — is very tight and it’s easier just to browse through the content with conventional navigation. That, and the more I observe of flyouts the more I think they confuse users more than anything.

If I discover that, somewhere in the future, a flyout nav scheme that will help the users in some way, I’ll re-open the issue. That is the beauty of the Web. You can change it.

In any case, you can see what I’m getting at. Know your users. Put some thought and effort into the information architecture of your site and use common sense. Don’t loose your navigation because Jakob doesn’t think users pay attention to it. Don’t put a bunch of flyouts in because you heard that you need to have every bit of content within one click of the homepage (I bet we’ve all heard that one — past time to kill that myth). Refine it. Test it with real users and let them dictate what conventions you use. If you can’t make a decision, or are forced to choose between two ways of doing something - always go with the least complicated.

I can’t stress enough how you need to get to know your users. Yes, taking the advice of the guru’s (nevermind taking advice from me — although if you get to know your users based on this advice — you’ll thank me later), and reading up on usability and accessibility are great, but nothing will open your eyes more than seeing how someone actually uses the sites you build.

It’s very, very interesting.

Filed under: IA and Usability