43. Piss up & brewery

Every page of your web site should allow users to travel very quickly to other areas of the site. Keep your navigation simple and clearly signposted.

Some customers are daft and most are very daft – always employ subtitles for the hard of thinking.

So Much Choice

Where to place the navigational bar is a fundamental decision that is usually taken when your web site is first created. The nav bar is the top level of options open to users to allow them to surf seamlessly through your site. In the case of e-commerce sites the options tend to be your top-level product categories such as books, music, DVDs, etc. For service providers the options are far more varied, but the principle is the same. A firm of lawyers, for example, will break their site into the various areas of expertise, such as criminal law, family law, copyright law… No matter what the nature of your business all web sites should follow this model.

Now the next choice is where to place the nav bar. There are only really three options on offer: the left hand side of the page, across the top or straight down the middle. The choice is entirely yours and I believe that different sites lend themselves much more to one or the other. Once you have decided on the location, this should be set in stone (at least during the life of this version of the web site). The number of options to offer? Remember the rules – simple and usable. Clear direction is needed, but not overindulgence. Keep it brief, but at the same time show all the options.

Why Bother?

Good navigation on a site has a direct correlation to the number of pages a user will view on that site and the number of returning visitors, not to mention the number of consumers and therefore orders placed. Without good navigation, you may as well not invest in any more than a five page web site. Even if there are 15,000 plus pages, how is anyone going to ever see them if they can’t get there in a logical and straightforward manner?

Always, Always, Always

Be consistent with your nav bar. Don’t suddenly add or take away options at different parts of the site. Your user needs to get familiar with the layout fast and suddenly moving the nav bar from across the top of the page to the left hand side ain’t gonna help. The same can be said for the options or buttons on the nav bar. You don’t know which page a user will hit first. It isn’t always your index or homepage – they could be following a link from your advertising, from a third-party site or from a friend. In a way, every page is your homepage, so it must contain as many of the constituent parts as is possible. The only excuse for removing or reducing the options on the nav bar is during the order pipeline because you want to ensure that the user becomes a consumer with the least amount of distractions possible.

And That Takes Us To?

Although it may seem obvious, buttons and links on the nav bar should go to the corresponding page of the web site. Be sure that the links work and that they do indeed point to the right destination. A useful technique to comfort users is to ensure that the target page has a heading that uses exactly the same title as appeared on the button taking them there. So, if your nav bar points to Financial Services, the heading on the page the user arrives at should say Financial Services, not Insurance and Other Services – or worse still, Customer Services.

How did it go?

Q. We think the alteration to the nav bar looks great. Marketing are keen to adopt the revised version as our homepage, but leave the rest of the site for a few months before implementing a new version of the web site. Surely this is OK?

A. No, it isn’t. Either make the alteration to the entire site or not at all. If the alteration to the web site has made marketing so excited, calm them down with a nice cup of tea and convince them that it’s probably better to concentrate on finding the budget, time and resources to re-launch the site sooner than previously planned. In no circumstances should you launch just one modified page.

Q. We have an e-commerce store but really like the idea of a central nav bar and little other text on the homepage. Surely the deeper navigational options can be introduced once the user has clicked through?

A. This is bordering on an intro page, and makes your users decide immediately which path they want to follow from the outset. Far better to let visitors get a feel for your entire site through the homepage before moving on from there.

Here is an idea for you…

Using the three potential options for nav bar placement (left hand side, across the top and straight down the middle), have your developers design three mock up pages to show what options are available and which one suits your site best. It might be, once alterations are made to colours, fonts and point size, that you immediately decide to launch a new version of the site. Good navigation should be the backbone of your web site; therefore it’s not uncommon for the nav bar to completely lead and dominate the decision on how a site looks and feels. Note that having the nav bar down the middle of the page limits how much other material you can display on your homepage. I’d only seriously consider this option for a service industry or information-based site.

Defining idea…

‘Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.’

T. S. Eliot

Defining idea…

‘You’re confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they’re talking about product. That’s not art, that’s the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I’m not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.’

Jeff Melvoin

Defining idea…

‘The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.’

Laurence J. Peter