As Web sites become more crucial to a company’s marketing and visibility, good site design is becoming critical to the long-term success of a site. (Some would say it always has been critical, but let’s not get lost in that point just now…). Problem is, as sites are being more heavily designed, navigation generally suffers.
I’ve recently looked at a number of high-end sites (generally Flash-based) whose overwhelming design makes the navigation difficult. These tend to be youth-oriented sites, and I guess someone must be asserting that kids are more welcoming of sensory overload, or these crowded, unfriendly sites would fade away.
But if there’s a study out there that demonstrates that today’s youth prefer a difficult design to a simple, organized one, I’d like to see it. Until then, keep the site navigation as clear as possible.Â
- Avoid hiding too much content under broad categories. Use dropdowns or tooltips to reveal what’s in each category (and to make skipping directly to deep content easier).
- Be sure the navigation is complete. Omitting obvious items such as Contact Us is fairly common, believe it or not…
- If your design uses them, make animation or strong visual elements “point” to the main task (e.g. the “buy now” or the site navigation).
- Use space to separate zones (especially navigation).
- Keep nav elements together (except utility links such as Privacy Policy or Login/Logout — they can stand alone).
- Avoid making your nav look like ads (or, for that matter, anything but navigation).
