Designing Web Navigation, Continued

Tip #2: Look at Navigation That Works

There's a lot to be learned from looking at sites that are easy to navigate. It doesn't mean comparing who's doing frames with who's doing colored sidebars. What it does mean is looking at what successful navigation has in common, regardless of the approach that's used.

Doing research for the book I wrote on web navigation, I looked at more than a hundred sites. Of those, very few featured navigation that could be considered successful. Those that did shared certain qualities that should inform navigation planning. Generally, navigation that works should:

• be easily learned
• remain consistent
• provide feedback
• appear in context
• offer alternatives
• require an economy of action and time
• provide clear visual messages
• offer clear and understandable labels
• be appropriate to the site's purpose
• support user goals and behaviors

(From Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience, O'Reilly, 1998)

All of these qualities are important, but the concept of providing feedback may have the biggest impact on users. Navigation should tell people where they are, and if possible, where they've been. Users should also be able to tell easily what is linked or clickable and what is not. They need to know whether they were successful at making a purchase, running a search, or completing some other task. All of these fundamental navigation needs can be met by providing feedback.

One way of providing feedback is to highlight the user's current location. For example, you are currently in the Guides section of this site, and so the Guides icon to the left is dimmed to show your location. The section headers repeat this information, and so does the recursive navigation above each header (i.e., Anchor > Guides > Design). All of this is intended to give you a clear sense of where you are within the structure of this site.

Another example of providing feedback is Amazon.com's checkout. When you've ordered your books, you are not simply left to flounder around, hoping your order went through. Amazon.com provides a clear message saying "Thank you for your order" and confirming that it has gone through. These techniques are simple, but you might be surprised how effective they can be. They help users to orient themselves and increase feelings of success in completing tasks.

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