Parallel Design has Some Major Benefits

May 062010
 

Creating a couple of mockups for a site has some real benefits, and it doesn’t just effect the appearance. It can also enhance the code and navigation of a site. Creating two versions for a site may sound like an extra expense, a simple pain in the butt, seem pointless, but it helps a site out a lot. Continue reading »

More Important Stuff on the Left

Apr 112010
 

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. Continue reading »

Expectations Fulfilled Thanks to Predictable Web Design

Feb 092010
 

Without hovering your mouse over my logo found in the header of this site, do you think it links to my home page? I’m certain that most of you think it will.

Predictable web design is knowing your users, and knowing how they expect your website to work. Here are a few important methods to make any site more predictable for its users. Continue reading »

Content Inventory, A Key for Having a Great Site

Feb 032010
 

Whether you have a new website or old, taking inventory of all of your content is an important step for ensuring easy navigation. Something I have repeated many times to clients, your website is a reflection of your planning. The clarity of the reflection largely depends on how you organize your content. Poor organization, often equals poor reflection. Continue reading »

Use Easy to Remember Functions for Great Website Usability

Dec 012009
 

Keeping a website simple does have it’s benefits. Besides being easier to figure out, it’s often easier to remember how you figured it out the first time. Unfortunately, many websites insist on torturing their users, and this is something even the big boys do. Using Facebook as an example, see how memory failure kicks in, and how it could easily be avoided.

Not Easy to Remember, Not Easy to Use

Over the holiday, my father-in-law asked me how to use Facebook. I’m not a big user, but I post the occasional comment or picture. How hard could it be to explain how to use Facebook? It turns out, pretty hard, and even Facebook hides the help link in the far bottom right in the footer. I guess they are afraid of trying to explain it as well. Continue reading »

Menu Stacking, This Menu is Not For You

Nov 072009
 

So what is menu stacking you ask. Menu stacking is the design concept of having one horizontal menu stacked on top of another. These separate menus often address different target groups or needs, and can run anywhere from just two menus to eight. I say eight only because I have actually caught a website doing this. There is no real limit to the confusion though, and it is not uncommon to find sites with at least three menus stacked on top of each other.

Menu stacking is a bad idea, and reflects poor planning in regards to site hierarchy along with the poor planning for visitors needs. Continue reading »

Poll – Do You Use Card Sorting?

May 202009
 

Has card sorting ever proved you wrong? Several times my original navigation plans for a site have been changed by the simple act of asking others. A designers view is not always that of your target audience. Here is some basic information about it, if you are unfamiliar with card sorting: Card Sorting Basics.

Here is the poll: Have you ever used card sorting to help define navigation for your website?

Archive of Web Usability and Design Polls

Mouse Work and Navigation

Nov 202008
 

You might guess by the title of this post that it is about using your mouse and navigation. It is, but really, it’s about barfing on your customer. I didn’t think barf in a title was a very good idea. I was in sales a long time, and barfing on your customer simply meant, you overloaded them with too many things to consider. The same thing happens all of the time to websites, and it can get to the point that it can even confuse the person in charge of the site.

igeneric

With permission from the site owner, I have been allowed to use iGeneric as an example. Their site is not quite ready yet. They are still in the process of uploading thousands of scripts to their site, and some final layout testing. IGeneric is going to be a large UK Software Directory. It will also include a large PHP web scripts directory. They will have premium and free scripts, and will have something for most types of programming scripts besides PHP.

So what is up with their site, and what does barfing on a customer have to do with it?

twomenusNavigation

First you need to look at their navigation from the home page. With close inspection you will notice that they have two main menus. This could easily be reduced to just one. With some closer inspection, here are some examples.

  • Menu #1 has Login link, though right underneath to the right is a login form. This menu is only availbable on the home page so they could delete that.
  • Menu #1 User Panel link takes you to a login page so this could be eliminated until at least the user has logged in.
  • Menu #2 has a logout link though I am not logged in.
  • Menu #2 has a Categories link though all the categories are listed right below.
  • Non popular items like “Support” are already listed in the footer menu, and could be deleted.

Adding a little more finesse those two menus could easily be condensed to just one. It will create less confusion to the visitors, and will also bring their premium content, the scripts, closer to the top making it easier for visitors to find. One menu, less confusion, the customers shirt will now remain clean.

Mouse Work

The final thing is the mouse work. First let me ask you this. Would you rather click ten times to find something with your mouse, or would you rather click five times, and scroll five times to find the same thing? Just clicking ten times is faster, and studies have found that just clicking is what most people would rather do. So in the case of this site, creating sub-categories might be the way to go. Their category listing is pretty huge, and knowing how people often categorize things (not how we expect it), it may be difficult to find what you are looking for. Having more broad categories can at least eliminate some obvious choices. It will also eliminate the dreaded scroll. So in this case, a little reorganizing and adding some sub-categories could drastically improve user performance.

Where to Look

Jul 222008
 

I always like keeping a site focused. I also always like simple navigation. When picking a layout for this site I was tempted by the three column layout that is common with blogs, but I decided it was just too much. It may initially feel limited to me when adding new content, but it forces the navigation to do the work, not the visitor.

menus

Here is a fairly new classified site that is suffering from growing pains, Encuentra.com. Time, and quick growth often creates sites full of add-ons. Just from the small screen shot I made here has six different menu locations. There are a great deal more if you continue looking at the rest of the page.

What happens to the visitor? Well, unless they are a regular, it may be difficult to know where to start. There is countless directions they could go, and I am betting, will often lead them down the wrong path.

Looking at this classified site I could imagine the owner would respond with “But I need all that stuff there.” Well, maybe you do. So how do you fix it? You consolidate. In this particular case you could easily delete menu 1-3, and just move those items in the left column under menu 4. This could make that left column very long so to avoid that you put your navigation to work. Menu 5 could easily be just one item, “My Account”. When the visitor goes to that page, the additional features that were in the menu are now listed on the My Account page. Menu 3 and 4 are filled with duplicate links that can be found elsewhere on the page. Delete the duplicates. The more time I spend looking at this site the more I realized that the menu could have very easily been reduced to just one simple menu on the left.

All of this boils down to one of my favorite posts, The Entropy Factor. Controlling the craziness of a site begins day one, and it will continue to a vicious battle. Pull your weeds, keep your site focused, and make it easy for your visitors to know where to look. Beside just reading this post take the time to look at the site, and imagine how you could re-organize. I’m sure you will find it takes little effort to consolidate the menu items.

Leaving Breadcrumbs for Navigation

Mar 082008
 

First, let me explain what a breadcrumbs are in the world of website navigation. Breadcrumbs are essentially directory links, and as you get deeper into the directory, the breadcrumb menu expands.

Here is an example of bread crumb links as you might see it on the web if you were on page “Sample” in the “Images” folder on this site:

Best Web Image>>>Images>>>Sample

It’s a natural method of navigation when you are on a directory website, but what I have been noticing lately, is that a lot of sites are including this method in support of their primary navigation system. This is not always a good thing, especially if your site is not a directory. If you use it make sure your sites hierarchy supports it.

Redundancies in content can often confuse a visitor, and this applies to menus as well. In fact, menus can have a more devastating effect because this is how a visitor begins to understand the site hierarchy. Having multiple menus conveying the same message, is similar to over using emphasis. The primary objective of a page may be lost if it is overloaded with multiple items that have been equally emphasized. If you keep the visitor focused, and use emphasis sparingly, you should only need one menu to clearly navigate your visitor. If you are using one already, don’t go rushing to delete it. Calculate it’s value, and if it is high for the space it requires on your site, keep it. Improving navigation is a good thing.

 Older Entries
© 2012 Best Web Image Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha