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.

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.

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