Navigation - Make it Easy to Get Around

"The foundation of almost all good information architectures is a well-designed hierarchy."

Anger. Confusion. Frustration.

These are the emotions of a Web surfer lost in cyberspace. In the murky, uncharted gloom of a poorly created Website. Not one of yours, I hope!

While it may be true that Content is King on the Web, your Website needs an orderly structure - and many signposts - to help visitors get around it. To find whatever they seek on it. To get to whichever section of it they wish to visit. Quickly. Effectively. Painlessly.

Your Website Needs a Good System of Navigation

The term "navigation" is used on the Web to describe the way a visitor to your site is guided as s/he moves about within its different sections. In this article I will discuss the elements of a good system of navigation for your Website.

What is the purpose of your Website?

In most cases, it will be to fulfil the needs of a particular group of people. An information resource will expect to let users find relevant content. An entertainment site aims to give the visitor a pleasant experience. A retail site hopes to sell products that a shopper needs or desires.

One of the most important facets of your Website - apart from the content, of course - is how you direct the visitor towards what s/he is looking for. And the best way to do that is by....

Putting yourself into your customer's shoes

The only way you can plan and design the optimal navigation system for your Website is to think in the same way a typical visitor to your site does.

Try and get into the visitor's mind.

How will s/he find your Website? How will s/he enter it? What steps will s/he then take to find useful content? What will happen after s/he finds it?

Trying to determine the answers to these questions will help you plan a blueprint for your Website's navigation system.

The Value of a Pleasant User Experience

At the pace the Web is exploding with new content, it is no longer easy to attract and impress a Web surfer. Your Website would have to offer a visitor an exceptionally good experience if s/he is to remember it, bookmark it, return to it later, tell a friend (or many friends) about it.

And one sure-fire way of alienating a first-time visitor is to make your site difficult to get around.

If you force people to click on multiple links and wander around your Website in futile circles trying to find helpful content, you can be sure they won't return again. There are simply too many better alternatives available on the Web.

By constructing a Website with an intuitive, elegant and simple navigation system that shows visitors just where they are and explains how to get to other sections of the site, you can enhance their experience at your site. Then, and only then, will they come back. And bring their friends with them!

Ensuring a smooth flow

Most searches for information or fun follow a logical sequence. This order may be different for each site. And if you understand the pattern your visitors might follow and implement it into your navigation system, they sail smoothly through your site. Almost effortlessly they are directed to the content they seek.

How can you design an excellent navigation scheme for your Website?

It isn't difficult if you put yourself in your customer's position and think about the things you would like best on a site like this. Here are some essential questions to answer:

• Where am I? - an aid to one's present location on the site
• Where do I go next? - a roadmap or directory of the entire site
• How do I get there? - an intuitive or descriptive system of navigation
• Am I still on this site? - a consistent look-and-feel across different sections of the site

Where Am I?

Remember your last holiday trip to a National Park or the shopping spree you went on at the neighbourhood's new shopping mall? What was the first thing you did there?

I'll bet you searched the location map for the familiar YOU ARE HERE sign.

And once you found it and got yourself oriented in space, the entire experience became joyful and exciting. You were no longer afraid of getting lost.

Similarly in a large or complex Website with multiple pages and plenty of content, it is easy for the surfer to feel lost. This is particularly so if s/he enters through a route other than the homepage of the site. Bewildered, s/he asks the question: "Where am I?"

An excellent navigation system will answer this question - on every page.

By mentioning the title of a page, or by highlighting the topic, or by the use of buttons of a different color or design, you can let your visitor figure out the page on which s/he is.

Tips and Tricks

In your HTML TITLE tag, use descriptive text to explain the page's content.

• Make sure your site's name and URL (and maybe even company name and other relevant details) are on every page of your site. This will be helpful even to people who print out your Webpage and read it offline.
• Somewhere in your site's content, try and fit in a TEXT based navigation aid that tells visitors where they are and possibly where they came from and where they can expect to go next. For instance, you could have a line that says: Home > Articles > Diamonds > THE KOH-I-NOOR The last one (KOH-I-NOOR) describes the page on which the reader presently is. It stands out because it is in ALL CAPS and not a hyper-link. The other words tell a visitor the path that leads to this page. By making them hyper-links, the visitor can easily click on them to get to other parts of your site. This sort of lateral and vertical navigation ease is a unique benefit of the Web, and an excellent system of navigation will exploit it to the maximum advantage.
• Alternately, you could use a more graphical expression of this by a set of tiny images. One that I like best is a set of white ARROWS in a RED circle to indicate that there are pages ahead and behind the present one, and a white SQUARE inside a BLACK circle to denote the page on which the reader currently is.
• Another way to let your visitor find his/her bearings is to use the button technique - a different color or shade for the background or text in the site's navigation bar to indicate the part of the site s/he is on.