Navigation is an inherent part of all communications - and is critical to the experience we have of many of the electronic devices we use today - but it's easy to forget how widespread navigation systems are.
Most books and publications use indexes, page titles, page numbers, and tables of contents. Your mobile phone uses text, icons and buttons. Even your TV, the most pervasive form of communication, has a navigation system, from a basic remote control to sophisticated on-screen menus. Your radio has a dial if it's old, and directional buttons if it's newer. And so on.
Navigation systems are all around us in the world too: the best designed airport quickly causes confusion without effective maps and signage.
Navigation is a vital element in the design of an effective website, and is a crucial consideration when redesigning an existing site. Often, poor site structure and a poor navigation shame are a central reason for people not using a site as easily (and therefore positively) as they should.
So how do we define a good navigation scheme? It's easy to think that navigation is all about menu bars and drop-downs, but effective navigation depends on much more than a good menu system.
At its most basic level, the role of a navigation scheme is to help a customer find their way around the hierarchy of a website quickly and easily: to get to what they want without confusion. Even at this level most sites fail to deliver, hiding poorly considered structure behind beautifully-styled menus.
The next step is to ensure that customers always know where they are and how to retrace their steps (the 'back' button is still the most widely used navigation device on the internet).
In most sites, that's where the navigation system ends. Customers can find things (if they're lucky), and find their way back again. And in most cases, this will make site work adequately. People will accept it and get on with it.
Creating a really successful navigation scheme demands a much more comprehensive approach: focusing much more on active assistance.
A good first step is to consider carefully what each type of customer is likely to need or be interested in. We use customer profiling and journey mapping techniques to inform this process, but even at a basic level it should be obvious where there is content on a site that is closely related to other content. Simply providing links to related information can dramatically reduce a customer's need to use top-level navigation.
In the same way, grouping related sets of information into dynamic customer-centric indexes or gateway pages can achieve two objectives: customers will find it easier to locate content directly relevant to them; and you have the opportunity to highlight content you want them to see.
In-context navigation was the earliest form of interactivity, and is still enormously effective. The use of hypertext links (words within content that are links to another page) is arguably the most intuitive way to move around sites, particularly those that are very content-rich.
Hypertext links create problems too, and many sites that use hyperlinks in addition to their main navigation system fail to address the ease with which a customer can get lost. They also run the risk of taking customers on a parallel path when you would have benefited more from them staying where they were.
Everything we've covered so far addresses quite mechanical means of navigation: things you click on to go somewhere else. But, as in more traditional communication materials like books, visual-language-based methods play a crucial part in making customers feel positive about your site and, by consequence, your brand.
At the lowest levels of content, visual navigation is essential. Well designed pages will help customers determine what are the most important elements on a page, where to look for different types of information, and so on. Often this is achieved with well conceived page layouts alone, using a balance of structure and visual hierarchy to ensure that pages are viewed in the way you want them to be.
Never under-estimate the value of really high quality page layout combined with a well-designed visual language: together they can ensure that almost any page is visually navigable.
Sometimes, however, additional visual devices can be used to assist customers and clarify the role of each element of a page.
Iconography is the most common, adding additional emphasis to items on the page and visually labelling items in different places, or different contexts as 'the same thing'. The simple addition of a consistently-used icon to denote a link to related information will help customers notice it and understand what it means, for example.
Icons can act as valuable visual guides, but they should be used carefully: an icon for everything is more confusing than no icons at all. Also, aside from the navigation issues, for some brands iconography may be appropriate, whereas for others it may be completely wrong and may weaken the brand.
This level of navigation thinking is so often missing from websites today: most assume that if there is a logical site structure and menu system in place, customers will follow an appropriate path through the site and read the pages they reach.
In our view, this is simply not good enough. Whatever the brand, a navigation scheme that works at all levels is essential, and applying deeper thinking to how customers navigate at all levels is among the most important activities for any redesign project.