Improving the nav bar & streamlining some sections

3 REPLIES · 25 VIEWS · STARTED OCT 13, 2014
#1
Hey guys,

Wanted to give you a heads up on some improvements we have in store for the navigation of the site. As you probably know, our nav bar has 10 sections to take you to the various landing pages. We've long wanted to have a drop down nav bar, whereby if you mouse over a nav bar 'parent' link you'll see a drop down list of the sub sections for quicker navigating.

Well happily our newest team member Kyle (ninja cat) is a web developer and he's taking a look into giving us this much needed functionality.

While we're working on this we're also taking the chance to consider how relevant all 10 'parent' links are today. Best practices for web navigation says that the fewer top level links you have on your nav bar, the better. The rule of thumb is to never go above 7!

So we'll be organizing the nav bar in a way that brings us in line with best practices.

The up side of changes like this are that:

1) It's easier for visitors to find what they're looking for, and it's easier for them to "see" and remember all the options.

2) Search engines favour sites with fewer parent level links and traffic is driven deeper into sites that follow the convention.

3) If we take further steps towards being more mobile / tablet friendly, we need to have a streamlined nav bar.


Know that these changes may mean that a section you're working on will be organized beneath a "catchall" parent. Know that this doesn't reflect on the value of the section in any way, it is about making the whole site more search engine and navigation friendly.

We'll try a new structure out for a period and we'll watch the analytics of how users navigate and where they go. We'll make changes down the road accordingly too.

Cheers,
Mark
#2
Hello!

Mark is correct, the fewer the options the better experience the user will have. If you have to many options, they wont know where to click and easily get confused.

You almost want to funnel them to where you want them to go, even though the user isn't aware of the manipulation.
#3
Great work! I think the improvements are indeed improvements, though I mis the "messageboard"-logo link.. :(
#4
We've kept forums as a top level 'parent' tab on the nav bar to make sure people can find it. Until our social media accounts build more of a critical mass I'd rather make those links more prominent.

Kyle is working on a few options and tweaks so what you see on the front page now is temporary and will look better.

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