Comments on: What kind of navigation is best?

By: Roy

Roy — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:40:02 +0000

You’re totally wrong about breadcrumbs. Not just a little bit, and you can call it your opinion if you’d like but either way you are wrong.

By: Pauline Smith

Pauline Smith — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:29:26 +0000

Jared VS Jakob

The battle continues!

By: Robbin

Robbin — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:40:00 +0000

Thanks Umer, for that segmentation. You have a nice large sample size….

As far as the simple products/services etc. Most tag lines are just terrible to start with (I should do a whole post on that one topic.) OK, look at ours, turning browsers into buyers. So that is about conversion, but doesn’t handle some of the other stuff we do that leads to conversion, like MVT or Web Analytics. And for sure doesn’t deal with Google AdWords or SEO. If our navigation (which could be better) said “products, services, about us” you would look at it and say, huh?

On top of that, even if you already know what a company does, you look at that and still feel like it is meaningless. I don’t mean you, after all, you work with the web all the time. The people who spent an hour a day on the internet and don’t user test sites or MVT them — they don’t get it. They layout of products and services (and contact us, hidden behind a link) just doesn’t make sense to them. And if it weren’t time to go to work, I would write more…

By: Umer Farooq

Umer Farooq — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 03:12:58 +0000

Hmm… why do you hate the simple navigations of products, services and about us? any insight into that. I get the point that it is hard to know… just from navigation what the site is about… but wouldn’t having a tag line cover that part… plus I find it the best way to navigate a site… as I don’t have to guess on a B2B site where to find the products and prices (if they are ever listed).

For breadcrumbs… I did a quick GA segmentation and found that only 2500 users from 300K plus ever used them on of our sites… may be it was due to how tiny they are…

By: Deborah

Deborah — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:49:38 +0000

I’ve seen two extremes in users behaviors with breadcrumbs.

Either they really like them, and use them frequently, or they don’t understand them at all, and wonder what they are. I’ve only done limited testing with users, so Jared and Benjamin may have more experience to share than I do.

By: Benjamin Rosenthal

Benjamin Rosenthal — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:30:30 +0000

Except in the cases when it is solving the problems that people have.

-B

By: Jared M. Spool

Jared M. Spool — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 07:33:47 +0000

Jakob Nielsen argues that breadcrumbs are increasingly beneficial to users. I tend to agree. You might want to take a look.

Yeah, he’s wrong.

There’s a cost associated with developing and maintaining breadcrumbs.

Why spend that resource if it’s not going to solve any problems that anyone has?

Jared

By: Benjamin Rosenthal

Benjamin Rosenthal — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:58:14 +0000

Robbin,

Jakob Nielsen argues that breadcrumbs are increasingly beneficial to users. I tend to agree. You might want to take a look.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/breadcrumbs.html

-Benjamin