Designing Effective Web Navigation
4/2002
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XII. Iterative User Testing
In addition to early usability testing using methods such paper prototyping, developers should seek user feedback at various stages throughout the development process. It is important to let users interact with the functional navigation in order to ensure sufficient usability. This will help to identify any problems associated with physically manipulating the navigation.
XIII. Scalability & Maintenance
When designing and developing a site's navigational system, developers must keep in mind what happens after the initial site has been built. How will the navigation be maintained? How will navigational elements be modified, added, or deleted? In many cases sites have a tendency to outgrow their navigation, necessitating that additional content sections and links be added.
Who will maintain the site after its initial launch will affect what type of navigational scheme is implemented. If the site will be maintained within the client organization, by non-developers, then the navigation must be designed to accommodate this. This situation would require some type of dynamic include file that can be easily updated.
Two classes can be used to describe how the pages of a Web site interact with one another, static or dynamic. Static sites are a series of individual pages that don't utilize common elements. A change on one page would not affect any other pages. For example, if a navigational element needed to be changed, it would need to be changed on each page individually. A static format may be sufficient for small sites, but it's easy to see why a large static site would be difficult and inefficient to maintain.
Dynamic sites are able to utilize common elements across a site. Such elements would include headers, footers, global and local navigation, and any other content that will be used in multiple locations. There are various ways in which a dynamic site can be maintained. Two common approaches are to use templates and includes. Templates are pre built page schematics that can be applied to any individual page. For example, a particular subsection of a Web site would have its own template. The template would contain common elements such as sub navigation, header, footer, etc., while also offering blank sections for individual page content such as, body text and page title. This will allow the site administrator to make one change to the template and have it affect all pages using that template. Web design software packages, such as Dreamweaver, offer templating capabilities. Templating is also offered by high-end content management systems, such as Interwoven and Vignette that are designed for the maintenance of large Web sites.
The use of includes is another way to more efficiently maintain a large site. An include file is a file that is pulled into another file to display the include's content. A Web page may consist of a .html file that pulls (or calls) several include files. Although this Web page consists of several files, to the user it appears as one continuous file. On a 2,000 page site utilizing a navigational include file, a change to the navigation would only need to be made to that one file. A footer is another common example of how a dynamic include could be utilized. Many sites have a standard footer that is included on every page. This footer would likely be maintained as an include file.
XIV. Conclusion
Designing a successful navigational scheme starts with defining a site's
mission and audience. These factors then help to produce the content to
be offered. The content then must be structured and labeled in a manner
that will be intuitive to the user. A site should use a combination of
global, local, contextual, and supplemental navigational methods. These
different navigational schemes should interact in a manner that enables
the user to recognize where they are, where the content they desire is,
and what the best way to get there is. Although there are no formal standards
on how Web navigation should be structured, it is good practice to implement
navigational schemes that are widely used and understood. A site's content
is it's most important feature, however, without an effective navigational
scheme the user will never find it. Effective Web site navigation does
not happen by chance. Web professionals must develop a firm understanding
of the issues discussed in this paper, and act accordingly.
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