When your website has a lot to offer, it’s hard to know how to organize it. How will people know where things are? Will they look in the same place that you would look? These questions are some of the most important when designing your website, because if someone can’t find what they’re looking for within a matter of seconds, they’re gone. Sites that I’ve noticed continually have navigational problems are magazines. They may be the best designed and user friendly PRINTED resources, but when they try to translate themselves online, it just becomes a cluster.
To demonstrate, I will begin with a navigation that could use some loving, and then work my way to a site that has managed to untangle their offers in a neat and tidy layout.
First: Women’s Health Magazine
This magazine is great because it does offer so much, but they’ve created a navigation category for each item instead of optimizing drop-down menus. Can’t Weight Loss fit under Fitness? Shouldn’t Food fit under Health? The biggest issue with this navigation is that they are trying to show you too much at the same time, and your eye has no idea what to look at. The two navigations on top (main and secondary) are perfectly acceptable, but in the banner space they’re showcasing at least 7 articles, and they rotate! Below the banner is another navigation and search bar. Shouldn’t Workouts be in the top under Fitness? The next example has some lessons to teach to WH.
Second: Real Simple Magazine
Real Simple is all about organizing your life, so it makes sense that their website would be..organized! They use two navigations as well, but they also take advantage of drop-down menus. At a quick roll-over, you can see if what you’re looking for is under the broad category you would expect it to be. The rotating banner also showcases the top articles, but there’s no need for showing you what’s coming up next.
Third: Target
Target can do no wrong in my eyes, so it’s hard for me to critique their site. Their design uses white space and grid intelligently, so they can have multiple navigations without looking cluttered, and their little ads above the rotating banner have white backgrounds, so they don’t distract. The only thing I’m a little annoyed by is the third navigation to the left of the banner. They aren’t related to the slideshow, so they must just be the products that Target is upselling. All in all, the white space allows you to have multiple navigations without adding confusion.
Conclusion?
Organize, organize, organize. If you can consolidate your categories, please do! Don’t underestimate your customers, because if they can’t find something quickly and intuitively, they’ll buy from someone else.
