Five (5) Ways to Bungle Your Navigation Design

Ever entered a large department store (read: website) and immediately felt the need to find the nearest store assistant (read: searchbox) because you couldnt for the life of you figure out how to locate your product shelf (read: navigation)?

Then you already know what Im talking about. Designing a route through your website is not that hard if it is carefully planned and done early. Int his article, we take a look at how to screw up your website navigation (if thats what you intend to do) and how to avoid them.

I have concluded that in spite of our pretenses, there really are some "standards" when it comes to website navigation design. Standards which really should not be. Web designers calla up a client and say something like "I can do you a 5-page website for×amount of dollars/pounds/Lira/etc". They then proceed to name those pages to include: "Home, Contact Us, Products, Services and About Us". Ultimately, you see a lot of sites with those titles as navigation links. Too many.

1. Dont plan your Content

The other days, I stumbled across a discussion on one of my favorite professional groups on LinkedIn. The discourse was about the relevance of navigation links as opposed to the search box. According to the original poster, statistics (….damned lies…..) have shown that more users use the search box than the navigation links on websites.

Here's the problem with that theory. The web itself is a collection of links.

2. Use Generic Names like "Products" even when what you provide is actually a service

You find this in smaller sites. Instead of a link like "what we do"

3. Don't Use Email Addresses as Navigation Links

I am really not against those who want to place their email addresses as links on their contact pages. The problem with this practice is this: because it is a clickable link, users are inclined to click on it. Secondly, the link opens up the default email client on the users' machine. In windows machines, the default is usually Microsoft Outlook/Windows Mail and you'd be surprised at the number of people who really dont make use of these things at all. So basically, I click on your email link, hang around for my email client to fire up, and then I realise that that really is not an option for me so I close that program and start all over.

Easiest Solution: Place a web form on your site where your users can easily enter their details and inquiries and move on with their lives.

4. Links to other Filetypes not shown as such

If your links are going to download a word document, then make it shown as such. End of story. Dont imagine that your users are waiting for links.

5. Make Links Distinguishable

You really have no right to expect that your site users will be happy to strain their eyes in search of your navigation links. No ma'am. If your site users are the same as 90% of the other website users in the world, then you are out of luck.