Navigation, Breadcrumbs & Guiding a User Through a Website
Finding your way around the navigation on a website can sometimes be like trying to find your way around a new, confusing city. Navigation and the process of guiding a user through a website is not just an important part of web design, but the web in general. If a user is confronted with a very complicated and unclear navigation when they enter a website, they are immediately going to be confused and are likely to turn away.
Personally speaking, if I think the navigation is confusing when I enter a website and cannot find the page that I am looking for, I often turn to the site map, (a list of every page on the website). This is not right and should never be the case as if key pages of the website are hidden in the site map or in other areas of the website and not easy to find through the main navigation, they are likely to be missed by the user as they are unlikely to know that these pages are there in the first place. This means that the hard work that has been spent on writing content is going to be thrown away.
In many cases, this problem occurs due to the sheer amount of content pages on a site, that there are too many pages to easily fit into a simple navigation system - or simply through bad design of a website navigation system.
How do we solve this problem?
Mapping out navigation is the perfect solution which can prevent problems later on in the design process. All key content should be included in this Navigation map, and none should be disregarded with the thought process of "oh, this can go somewhere else" as this is never the case - all content is important enough to be included.
Secondly, the importance of each individual content page within a Navigation map should be considered; which content pages should go before others in the navigation, which can afford to go on the sub-navigation. Surprisingly, this can affect which pages users access. As a simple example, with a drop down menu, a user is more likely to click on the higher navigation item in the menu, rather than the lower one. For example, on an about page, the key information about the company is likely to be at the top with the history at the bottom, this is the case because the key company information is where we want to direct the user, rather than to the history of the company.
Breadcrumbs a small list, normally located at the top of a webpage that tells you what page you are on) are a small but easy way to maximise usability. They make it easy to go back to one of the pages previously visited and means the user doesn't have to re-trace their steps through the main navigation.
Search boxes are always a good solution to solve any navigation confusion. If a user is having trouble with the navigation, they can always search for the keyword that they are looking for in the search box and be given a list of pages that relate to that word. This, however is not a reason to leave out some of the key pages from the main navigation. This solution is simply a backup plan just in case the user cannot find what they are looking for.
Clear design is also an important part of an effective navigation system. Without a clear, easy to use design, the navigation map that we have first created as a base for a clear navigation is going to be made redundant. In order to create a clear and easy to use navigation design, the website map should be looked at and the best method of navigation decided before design begins.
In Conclusion
It is important that we map out our navigation before we begin designing it, this means that we have a clear starting point for our navigation system and means that later on, we are not going to forget any key content. It is always important to also have a backup plan to go along side our navigation such as a search box or a breadcrumb, just in case a user cannot find a page, or if they are inexperienced with navigating websites.