The 3 Functions Of Truly Good Navigation

Top navigation, left & right. Breadcrumbs, headers, footers. We usually think of them all as having only one function: Getting your visitors from A to B.

But - on top of that - really good navigation can help a website achieve some big essential tasks.

1. The Obvious Bit: Good Navigation Lets You Find What You’re Looking For

Hopefully this should be obvious: Navigation gets your visitors to where they’re going. If your visitors can’t get where they need to on your site, then your navigation needs looking at.

Side Note: a simple way to improve this element of your navigation is to note down some key tasks your visitors would want to perform (or key tasks you want visitors to perform) & then watch what happens when a few test subjects (even if it’s just friends, family & colleagues) try to do it.

2. Good Navigation Tells You Exactly What A Site’s About

When you visit a site for the first time, there are several clues to the topic of the site & the scope of it. For example, if you look at this site, up at the top it leads with ‘Online Marketing Advice’. That gives you the general subject area.

Perhaps more important than that, down the left, there are a few navigational categories: “Copywriting”, “Search Engine Optimisation”, “Paid Search Marketing”, etc. At a one-second glance, this tells you the range of topics covered on the site.

The same is true on many other sites (and can be true of your site). Here’s a glimpse of Amazon’s old top navigation:

Amazon started selling books. Today they sell thousands of products across a range of categories. If you take a look at the navigation above, you can immediately understand the full range they sell. Even without thinking about it. The same is true of sites you visit for the first time. If your navigation is set up nicely, a quick glance will tell your visitors exactly what your site covers.

3. Good Navigation Gives You A Mental Map

First off - is this important? Does it matter whether your visitors have a mental picture of the structure of your site? Well think back to a time when you’ve been in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. Think about the uncertainty in your head - are you going in the right direction? Is it safe here? Is what you’re looking for here? What else is here?

This is an important part of a website: Making visitors feel comfortable & familiar, and helping them to understand where they fit into it.

So how does this work? How can navigation achieve this? To carry on using Amazon as an example, here’s their new primary navigation:

A quick look at this not only tells you what Amazon sell, it also tells you exactly how it’s all organised, and gives you a perfect picture of the size and complexity of their store. Like a tube map:

Imagine you’re standing at a tube station & you know nothing about the tube network. A single look at the map tells you the size of the network, the number of lines, as well as how to get from A to B.
Your navigation can do exactly the same. If a visitor is on one page of your site, very good navigation can condense all of the complexities, the different areas, routes, types of content. Good navigation can put all of this information into a single, easy-to-understand mental picture.