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More Important Stuff on the Left
By Robert Campbell on Sunday, April 11th, 2010
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Last week I posted, Keep the Important Stuff on the Left. It was a quick post about how Jakob Nielson has new data that supports old, about how the important things like site navigation should really be on the left.
I know many would argue this, and I myself, could list a handful of blogs (some of my favorites) that contradict this. That’s why I thought we should take a look at what the kings and queens of the Internet are doing today. I give you the top 5, according to Alexa: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, and Live.
What Does Google Do?
Google does so much, and you could probably find a menu in just about every part of a screen when looking at all of their services. What are they best known for though? Google is best known for search and Gmail.
Google search results are not centered, they are aligned to the left. If you need additional search options, this menu is expanded on the left as well.
Gmail you ask? Menu on the left.
Facebook uses a three column centered theme. Their main menus can be found on top and on the left. I’m guessing 95% of you reading this have a Facebook account so I will omit the screenshot. Can you guess what fills the bulk of the right column?
YouTube
YouTube may appear to be a trouble maker to my theory based on first impression. They have content on the left, supported by a second menu on the right. If you look closely at the right column content though, you will find it does not truly support the navigation like the top menu does, or some of its other menus. The right menu in this case is more of a “look what else we have” menu.
Take a look at how YouTube displays your account information. It’s on the left.
It’s Time for Yahoo!
Yahoo has been using the left hand navigation style since before most of you had ever heard of Google.
Finishing with Live
I’m not a big Live user, though I do use Bing on occasion. Logging in to my Live account though, what do I find? A navigation menu on the left.
And Finally
I can only imagine some of you are thinking that this doesn’t apply to your own site, and you may be right about that. Mashable, probably the most popular blog today, keeps all of its navigation in the top horizontal menu. Ads and miscellaneous fluff float harmlessly on the right.
So what is the best way? Identify site purpose, know that users will typically first look to the top left, and develop for that. There is no law that says menus have to be on the left. But in the eyes of many, it just makes sense.
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Hi.
We all usually use all of the sites you mentioned above. But never noticed that thing you mentioned. So thank you for informing us.
This is very helpful. It will also help your SEO, I think, if you have your menus on the left. Search engines like sites to be user friendly.
Thanks for this informational post.
Thanks for the info, btw google just released there new search system, they say if your page loads faster the higher you will rank. Just wanted to let you know.
Very true…In December they even came out with a tool to help test your site…to keep up to par with them.
http://www.bestwebimage.com/archives/webmaster-tools-site-performance-a-new-cool-tool/
My site is hosted in AU, for AU and loads fast in AU. Assuming page speed is determined from a server in the US then I will appear slower than I actually am, therefore I have a chance of being penalised? I will have to dig deeper.
Sorry to go OT.
Thanks, i needed that to test out some of my sites.
Good finds, Rob. More major sites use the left adage than I thought.
Till then,
Jean
Some really awesome points on having your navigation on the left, thank you for taking the time to find all those screen shots!
Does anyone know of WP themes with navigation on the left?
This one, or better yet…the WordPress Admin panel.
What theme is this? Since it has the navigation on the left….
It is/was…looter-xp. If you were to download it though, don’t expect it to look much like this site. Very modified. It’s theme did have the same left hand column though.
You’ve done a great job of modifying the theme Robert, I especially like the small details such as the wrapping of the comments with the dashed orange lines
All very beautiful and comes out with a very crisp and clean feel to it! My theme on the other hand.. is just plain and basic :-p
Till then,
Jean
Also what I really would like to see is how rankings correlate to how old the cache-date is. Which in my opinion is a better indicator then pagerank to see how much authority (in the eyes of google) a page has.
That is very true, I never knew all the menus go on the left, I wonder if its because thats the first thing your eye sees when looking at a site.
But lots of HTML site templates are having their menu on the right. Any specific reason ?