Choosing a Navigation Model

Kate McMillan

January 23rd, 2009
by Kate McMillan

If you’re not just building a landing page, chances are that you’ll need a navigation metaphor.  Popular ones include listing the pages of your site across the top of each page, or listing them down the side.  If your site has enough content, many times these are both utilized — the top for the primary pages, and the side for the subsections for each primary page.

Whenever possible, you want to keep the language used to identify your pages clear, simple, and short.  And visually, you want to use an easily identified metaphor.  For example, if you make a top navigation look like folder tabs, most everyone will be able to figure out what they are and how they work.  In this case it’s because the visual metaphor is clear and strong.  The currently active page or section is easy to see, and knowing the currently active page puts your users at ease because they gain a greater sense of control.

The number of pages you can display in a top navigation is limited by horizontal space, but a side navigation is much more scalable.  This doesn’t mean you should create a great number of pages to list there as it’s much more difficult for a user to parse the choices.   Many times the functionality of a side navigation is replaced by a dropdown menu in one or more of the top navigation choices.  The benefit of a side navigation is that the context of the current page is always in view.

So, if you’re thinking about how to display the hierarchy of your web site, think about how many page you need, how they relate to each other, how their number may change over time, and choose a navigation metaphor that serves your content, but more importantly, makes it really easy for your user to understand the organization and move through your site.

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Comments:

  1. Emilia Doerr
    (January 23rd, 2009 at 5:07 pm)

    Great tips on choosing top vs. side navigation. And good point about giving the users a greater sense of control to help ensure that they are happy navigators!

  2. Amber Wallace

    Amber Wallace
    (January 24th, 2009 at 5:14 pm)

    Great! Information architecture is such a huge part of site development and user interface design. Users will thank you for taking this into account!

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