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In this issue
Upcoming
events
| Oct 8, 2008 |
Free online webinar: Educational sector websites 10am EDT |
| Oct 13-16, 2008 |
User Interface 13 Conference, Boston MA |
| Oct 13-15, 2008 |
10th ACM Conference on Computers and Accessibility, Halifax, Canada
|
| Oct 21, 2008 |
"Web accessibility", talk by Derek Featherstone, at the next CapCHI meeting, Ottawa. |
| Nov 2-7, 2008 |
User Experience 2008, Chicago, IL |
| Nov 11-12, 2008 |
Site search analytics for a better user experience PLUS Don't make me think: The discount usability testing workshop, Washington, DC |
Is your global navigation hindering visitors?
Website navigation should help users quickly accomplish their tasks. Unfortunately, we often see websites maintaining a fixed set of global links on every page, most of which are no longer pertinent to the task at hand once a user makes his or her first click. They only hinder progress.
You usually come to a website to DO something! It may be to research a car, book a flight, buy a book or answer a question. The visible navigation links are the only way for you to move forward and accomplish your task or goal. If navigation is done well, it helps guide you to your goal in a quick, direct manner.
Once you've indicated your intent by clicking one of the top level links, the website should respond by providing the next set of links which will quickly take you to your destination. As Gerry McGovern stated in his New Thinking newsletter article (April 2, 2006):
"The primary purpose of web navigation is to help people move forward. It is not to tell them where they have been, or where they could have gone."
There is growing consensus that most large websites (e.g. government, enterprise, news and entertainment sites) benefit more from use of task-oriented and context-sensitive local navigation than from maintaining a large number of global navigation links on each page.
“Although it has some limited use, global navigation is overrated. Contextual navigation offers much more value, providing direct links to elements that are highly relevant to the user's current location (and presumably their current interest [task]).”– Jakob Nielsen
“Similar to how a home page provides an overview of the entire site, landing pages provide an outline of the content in a given section.”– James Kalbach
“While global links to top-level categories help reinforce the breadth of a site's offering, they also consume significant screen real estate for links that arguably are not as relevant to users as page-specific content. This is particularly true at the lower levels of the hierarchy, where there is a larger amount of semantic distance between the global links and the page content.” – Heidi Adkisson
In our May 2008 Insighter we commented on the potential pitfalls of maintaining the top level navigation in the left column of all web pages. However, based on a recent sampling of government websites, we were pleasantly surprised to see that many websites are adopting and implementing context-sensitive navigation in the left column. This change seems to have coincided with the transition to Common Look and Feel version 2.0 (CLF2.0).
The Health Canada website provides an excellent example. Once a user selects a subject of interest on the Home page, the left-hand navigation changes to provide links specific to the new context - in this case Consumer Product Safety information.
Check your websites. Once people have selected a link from the Home page, does it make sense to maintain the global navigation or provide the links they will be looking for next? More often than not, task performance can be improved significantly by providing contextually-sensitive links.
Contact us to find out about our new tools for optimizing navigation for your website.
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Are you following best-practices guidelines for navigation?
Based on our usability findings and research over the years we've compiled a list of best-practice guidelines for navigation. How does your website compare to these best practices?
- Let users begin the top task or two directly on the Home page, without requiring any navigation
- Provide a small number of links to major sections of content or functionality
- Provide a link to the Home page from every other page of the site, but no active Home link on the Home page
- Link the logo to the Home page
- Provide links to all major parent pages of the current page
- Include a site search box on every page, with the possible exception of application pages which may have their own dedicated search capabilities
- Emphasize links to the top tasks, relevant to the current context, which are not directly supported on the current page
- Provide sub-links, roll-over text, or some other form of “look ahead” to help visitors predict where each link will take them (“where can I go?”) if there is the potential for any ambiguity
- Provide cues as to the person’s current location (“where am I?”) – e.g. highlight the currently active navigation elements
- Provide cues as to the path one could, or did, take to get to the current page (“how did I get here?”) but this should always be secondary to the primary goal of navigation (“where can I go?”) – Breadcrumbs can be used to concisely show a page's location within the site hierarchy
- Provide links to other, task-relevant pages at the same level
- Provide direct access to the top website task(s) directly on the Home page and to the top tasks for a given section on the main landing page for that section
- If expanding menus are provided, manage visitor expectations by providing a clear indicator that the menus do expand
- Ensure all link destinations are specific and unique
The following annotated screen shots, taken from the Transport for London website (http://www.tfl.gov.uk/businessandpartners/default.aspx), provide a visual summary of some of the best practices.
- Make link labels clear, concise, unambiguous and consistent
- Use the language of your customer, not internal jargon or organizational terms
- Left-justify text in a vertical menu to make it easier to scan
- Begin each menu item with the most specific, information-carrying words
- Do not start several menu items with the same words because it makes the menu difficult to scan
- Use minimal global or local navigation on web application pages where people are involved in the process of filling out a form, making a transaction, etc.
- Ensure the navigation element associated with the current page is not an active link
- If drop-down or fly-out menus are provided, ensure a clear arrow icon is associated with each parent item to indicate the presence of the additional menu information
- Make sure links are readable, using a sans serif font of appropriate size - make sure they resize with browser settings
- Maintain a consistent navigation approach throughout the website
- Place the main navigational elements where people expect them to be – generally along the top and left-hand side of the page
- Ensure the required navigation is available, when needed, but does not dominate the page
- Always use text for navigation links, not images
Contact us if you'd like to discuss applying these best-practices to your website.
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Morae 3 - Support for dual camera, dual display, automated testing...
TechSmith has released Morae 3, the newest version of their leading customer experience testing software. The new features add considerable functionality that make it a compelling upgrade. They include the ability to:
- Record two cameras so you can record customer interactions that don't happen on the computer - like mobile devices, paper prototypes, interviews, ancilliary displays, etc.
- Record from multiple monitorsConduct unmoderated testing with AutoPilot
- Create multiple surveys
- Search across recordings for behavioural data of interest (e.g. errors, web page changes)
- Adjust playback speed to review recordings faster
- Export video clips directly into PowerPoint
- Drag and drop graphs, screenshots, data tables, etc. into Word documents
- and more....
Contact us to buy or upgrade to Morae 3
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Customer Carewords FREE webinar
Educational sector websites – October 8th
Hear Gerry McGovern and Bob Johnson (our educational sector expert) speak live on how you can increase key audience engagement and generate higher conversion results by better managing your website.
This FREE webinar from Customer Carewords takes place on Wednesday October 8th, 2008 at 10:00AM Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)
Register now for this free Task Measurement webinar
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Quote of the month
“We read website navigation like we read a car navigation system. We're looking for that exact link (next turn) we need to click on. We have a destination in mind and we want to get there as quickly as possible."
Gerry McGovern, New Thinking newsletter - June 1,2008
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