Picking a navigation scheme

Like in everything … we learn from history. Gaining knowledge from what has been done successfully in the past will help you build for the future. In this case it will help you with the basics for creating your site navigation.

There are two basic types of navigation - side and top. These two types of navigation have been used on a majority sites over the past 12 plus years and users have grown accustom to how they work. To be successful you should build on this base knowledge. By using one or a combination of both of these base navigation schemes you will greatly enhance your usability. A good book for getting a handle on navigation and other basics of site design is titled “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.” This book is a quick read but full of great examples of dos and don’ts in usability design (written by Steve Krug, New Riders Press; 2nd edition - August 18, 2005).

Most sites up until the late 1990’s employed a side navigation scheme still in use today where a list of links are stacked vertically on the left and/or right side of a site. A majority of the side navigation was placed on the left following the logic that most of us read from left to right. In it’s simplest form they were just links and now have grown with the use of CSS and Javascript into an expanding form of tree navigation. Allowing users to get to content they want faster. Skipping the multiple page exploration that seemed endless in the mid-90s.

Some current examples of sites still employing side navigation include: LATimes.com and NYTimes.com

Then in the late 90s Amazon.com made the horizontal nav scheme all the rage. The key to it is simplicity. Keeping the number of top level sections manageable and expand the site into logical and intuitive subsections. The ease of use made the site very popular and made the shopping experience one that everyone in e-commerce wanted. Today media and promotional sites are using the horizontal navigation for the same usability reasons with great success.

Other sites have found a combination of the two schemes a good fit. Using the horizontal or tabbed navigation for their main site while using a side navigation for giving users a list of areas they may want to explore in the section they are in.