Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [133]
To understand how to support your navigation with information, let’s look at two tourism destination websites. Using two western U.S. cities, whose websites and appeals couldn’t be more different, we find that the navigation is treated differently as well. These examples illustrate the importance of surrounding your navigation with information that enables the visitor to understand their location within the website, the relation to other content, and a clear destination. Otherwise, there will be a high level of frustration.
Case Study: Confusing Navigation
The first city is Breckenridge, Colorado (see Figure 12-5). The navigation is positioned in the middle of the page, which is a bit nontraditional, but it’s definitely not a big issue. There are navigation elements at the top of the page, but they are not major visual elements, and they are not intuitive enough to capture a visitor’s attention. Using the primary evaluation elements of pictures and contrast (people look at pictures of people, and our eyes are naturally drawn to areas of high contrast), the attention on this site will naturally settle on the large image of the woman fishing and the high-contrast content at the bottom of the page.
Figure 12-5: Breckenridge, Colorado, home page
However, since every page is a home page, let’s look at another page from the same site (see Figure 12-6). Here we start to see the site’s navigation fall apart and become undependable. Starting at the top of the page, the URL bar (which is part of the user’s interface) shows this page as being http://gobreck.com/page.php?pname=summer/events/ISSC. The URL matters in terms of visitor navigation. When words are used in the URL, they assist visitors in understanding their location within the site and the content of that page. When the words in the URL bar match the content of the page, it helps develop the overall search engine optimization relevance, and it helps as a navigational anchor to assist visitors with content recognition.
The image on the page is somewhat indistinguishable, and the entire navigation bar has changed colors from green to blue. Being on an inside page, the navigation bar should change only in a way that informs the visitor as to the section of content where they are located. Since this page is in the Events section (which the breadcrumb links suggest), then the Events tab should be highlighted or distinguishable from the other in some way. Highlighting the current section of content by using the navigation bar is one of the primary elements that gives a visitor a sense of location.
Figure 12-6: Breckenridge, Colorado, events page
The next two elements develop additional confusion, because the headline on the page is the “Budweiser Select International Snow Sculpture Championships,” but the breadcrumb trail navigation (those are the links that are meant to help you find your way back home) located just under the main navigation tell a different story:
> Home > Summer > Events Budweiser Select International Snow Sculpture Championships
Why are we taken directly to the text for this one event instead of a list of all the summer events?
The subnavigation (on the left of the page) offers little help because it contains links to other events by week, by month, and by holiday. There are very few cues as to how to navigate to an actual summer event.
In moving through the site, there tends to be a breakdown in the subnavigation’s ability to provide a location to the visitor and a clear relation to additional content. On another page (see Figure 12-7), the breadcrumb navigation reads > Home > Summer Activities, but the subnavigation provides choices of Winter, Summer, Breckenridge Golf Course, Kids Activities, and Activities Information Form. The conflict of information will cause hesitation as the visitor attempts to complete information-gathering tasks, because the instructions to access information are unclear.
Figure 12-7: Breckenridge, Colorado, activities