Small Steps To Stay On Track - Navigation

A website's navigation is an essential element that is often overlooked. Below is a list of DON'Ts and DOs for your site navigation. First the bad news:

What NOT to do in your Site Navigation

• Don't have link-appearing titles that are not links.  When you go to a website, for example, Target.com, there are a list of links at the top of the page such as "Women" and "Men." These links denote different departments in their store/website. When you hover over these links, there are many sublinks that are available. Here is the don't, even if a link-appearing object has sublinks, still make the link-appearing object link somewhere.  Yes, many customers will hover over "Women" then find the subcategory that they want and click that subcategory, but there will be some customers who keep trying to click "Women" and may become frustrated when it doesn't go anywhere. This is good for customers who are not sure what subcategory they want, as well as for customers who may jump the gun and click on a link before the page loads enough to have the sublinks even appear.

• Don't have too many levels in drop down menus. I am a firm believer in drop down or flyout menus in top or side navigation bars.  However, if there are too many levels, chances are that a customer's mouse will slip and they will lose all the levels they have gone through.  This is a similar idea to avoiding too many clicks before a customer can purchase. There are some websites that need to have that many clicks or need to have that many levels, but if you can avoid it, do. 
• Avoid vague links.  A single link that says "Customer Service" is less helpful than a series of links that say "Returns," "Shipping Information," and "Privacy Policy."

What you SHOULD do in your Site Navigation

• Build navigation with your customers in mind. The first navigation bar that you see on the page (no-a-ways this is typically the top navigation bar), should contain your main categories or your main site links.  I would not suggest using the top navigation bar for informative links like "About Us" or other customer service related links.  Those links are informative about your company, but they are not as useful to the customer.  Start your navigation with major categories.  If you look at Target.com, the first categories on their page are "Women," "Men," and "Baby." Looking at Apple.com, you will find that their main categories at the top of their home page list the main products that they sell. Toys "R" Us starts their navigation with "Category" and "Age" pull down menus to immediately help their customers sort through the thousands of products available.

• Do create a navigation menu that is straight to the point with meaningful text.  Don't include links called "Products" with a flyout menu.  Instead, include major categories at the top and any non-major categories in the side navigation bar or a flyout selection. 
• Do have interactive links.  If a customer mouses over a link, something should happen.  The link could change background color, change text color, become underlined. The customer should be visually shown what link they are mousing over, and be able to see that it is in fact a link. 
• Do include link titles.  In the HTML for an href statement, you can include the href location, as well as a link title.  This is not only good for search engines, but it is good for customers, especially for links of images.  
• Do make the navigation stand out.
• Do have clear breadcrumb menus.
• Do make it simple. I like the idea of getting to any category page on your website from any category page on your website. Repeat customers or customers on a mission will know exactly what sub category they would like to view.  Having a categorized navigation with all of your sub categories will make it simple for customers to get exactly where they want without having to dig.
• Do include company information links in the footer.  Just like the top navigation, the footer navigation can have categories of links.  Group your links in categories such as "Company" containing "About Us" type links, "Customer Service" containing "Shipping" and "Returns" type links, and "Stay Connected" with links to blogs, Facebook, etc.