Provide Navigation Tools
Sometimes it’s the simple stuff that bears repeating. Take care to provide a full Navigational Set on every page–and always have a site map one click away from anywhere your users might be on your website.
The Main Menu should contain links to the content that is particular to your site. If you run a bookstore this might include menu items such as “Fiction”, “Psychology”, “History”, and “Poetry”.
On your Secondary Menu, often placed at the bottom of the webpage, you should place links to more generic or conventional content e.g. “Site Map”, “About Us”, “Help”, “Contact Us”.
Pop-out menus or Sub-Menus may not be necessary for your website. However, to continue with the bookseller example, the “Fiction” menu-item might pop-out a sub-menu item containing “Bestsellers”, “Novels”, “Short Stories”, and “Newly Published”.
What we call Context Palettes contain triggers for operations such as “Print”, “Email”, “Bookmark”, or “Post to Del.icio.us”. You may not need to provide this set of options for your users. They are of particular use in journalistic or blogging contexts and are to be found more and more in other settings.
When you provide a site map, make sure it is a site map and not, as I once found at a national Irish newspaper, a Content Index (which, since it originated offline, did not reference the RSS feed list I was looking for). A site map should be exhaustive and set out in a form that accurately reflects the structure of the entire website.
Flickr Image by Editor B