Discuss: Home Page Goals
by Derek Powazek
- Editorial Comments
22 Thanks, Y'All!
Thanks for all the fabulous comments, everyone!
Patrick, what about navigation? Anything in particular?
posted at 12:27 am on February 4, 2006 by Derek Powazek
23 Re Navigation
What do you think the function of navigation is, and what types of navigation tend to be succesful? For instance, css drop-down navigation has the advantage of giving quick links to the second or third level of a site, but the disadvantages of having hidden information (that appears when you mouse over), information overload (the drop-downs might link to 20 or more sections), and be physically difficult to mouse through (a javascript delay that keeps the menu displayed for a second or two when the mouse leaves it can help usability).
Should there be more than one way to navigate to the same place on a site? A List Apart’s “Topics” navigation allows this, but unlike the global navigation, provides no feedback (when you are in the “design” section, the “design” link looks like the other links, and even stays clickable).
It is easy to underestimate the trauma of navigating even an excellently designed site. You provided such clarity of thought in your home page article, I’d be very interested in your ideas on the goals of a site’s navigation!
posted at 04:47 am on February 4, 2006 by Patrick Harris
24 Message and navigation
We just went through a redesign of our site. Message was critical to us and the homepage had to convey a feeling about our company.
I’d be interested to hear what others think of the design and message: www.heartwoodmedia.com
posted at 01:23 pm on February 7, 2006 by Chris Conroy
25 Navigation
What do you think the function of navigation is, and what types of navigation tend to be succesful?
My preferred method, with a large multi-layered site, would be to have the navigation for the whole site (or at least for the top 2 levels, maybe 3) in nested lists. Make these into popup menus with CSS and JS to back it up.
Then – this is where it gets clever – pull the current section out of the dropdown altogether with an id=“currentsection” on the sub-<ul>, and position it on the page so that it is always there.
That way, even for people who are unable to use the dropdown menus, they can navigate to the main page in each section and then follow a link from a static menu to pages within that section. And the only thing you have to do is to move the id=“currentsection” on each page – everything else stays exactly the same across the whole site.
This also helps make it clear to visitors where they are on the site.
posted at 08:18 am on February 8, 2006 by Stephen Down
27 Untitled
It’s funny you mention flock as a site with a good homepage, because the few times I checked the site out, I did have the feeling of ‘what IS this thing?’?
The site says it’s a browser. Ok. Then it is stated that it offers tools, ok. But what are those tools? What can I do with them? Why is flock better then the next thing? These questions aren’t being answered right away, except in very broad and vague terms.
Good article otherwise :)
posted at 05:14 pm on February 16, 2006 by Okke Formsma
28 The article that costs to be translated
Thank you for the nice article. I’ve even translated it into Russian, so that many non-english speaking people can read it.
Those who are interested may read it at validator.ru
posted at 12:20 pm on February 20, 2006 by Alex Balaboshko
29 Thanks for Goal #3
This will be helpful for sharing with the Head of Computer Services (and website administrator) where I work. He considers himself a big proponent of Web 2.0, and I thought I was, too.
But now he’s using our pre-roll-out user studies to argue against including a news section on the homepage, because users didn’t specifically ask for a news section. This sounds like faulty logic (and bad marketing) to me. I mean, they probably didn’t ask for a company logo, either, but of course we have one.
I agree with the principal of giving ‘em what they ask for, but should there be no room at all for giving ‘em what we’d like them to KNOW they can ask for (new products, services, staff expertise)?
posted at 03:02 pm on February 20, 2006 by Amanda Werhane
30 Take a step back
Nice article Derek.
Personally, I like to work on the homepage iteratively. But it’s good to hear the methodologies used by others. User experience is something every web designer needs to bare in mind through the page design process!
Just something I would like to add though, when your talking about designing internal pages and working your way out it sounds pretty ‘high level’. I think a successful web design always starts with good information architecture. If you can keep the content on a leash and have a basic sitemap in mind it makes designing a great-usable site that much easier! ;)
posted at 07:34 pm on March 22, 2006 by Richard Lee
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21 Excellent article
I’d be very interested in a follow up article on navigation.
posted at 10:58 pm on February 3, 2006 by Patrick Harris