Website Usability Guidelines

Website Interior Page (3 of 4)

Follow these usability recommendations:

Drop Down Menus - Be careful if you use drop down menus. One popular method of navigation within a website is a drop-down list of web pages accompanied by a GO command button. Many users select a page from the drop-down list and wait for the browser to take them to that page. Many do not realize that they need to press the GO button to actually navigate to that page.

Screen Real Estate - Web pages should be dominated by content of interest to the user. The basic screen real estate rule is to dedicate 20% of space to navigation and 50-80% to content. Remember, that 19% of screen real estate is used for the web browser. The most popular screen is 17" (1024 x 768).

White Space - As with all layouts, white space is not necessarily useless and it would be a mistake to design overly compact pages. White space can guide users and help users understand grouping of information. If given the choice of separating two segments of content by a line or white space, choose white space.

Simplicity Wins over Complexity - Continue to tweak your interior page design and remove unnecessary content. Remember, the purpose of the interior pages is to promote the intended action by the user in the shortest period of time. Keep it simple.

Navigation Rules

• Locate the primary navigation area in a highly noticeable place. Preferably directly adjacent to the main body of the page, the left side-bar.
• Avoid putting any top horizontal navigation above graphical treatments such as horizontal rules or banner areas. Users often ignore anything within or above a rectangular shape at the top of the screen. This behavior is called banner blindness.
• Group items in the navigation area so that similar items are next to each other. Don't confuse the user.
• Don't provide multiple navigation areas for the same type of links. For example, don't have multiple areas for categories or multiple areas for news. Groups that are too similar can fragment and complicate the interface, making the user work too hard to create order and meaning.
• Don't include an active link to the Homepage on the Homepage. Similarly, if you link your logo to the Homepage from other pages on the site, the logo should not be clickable from the Homepage.
• All interior pages must have link to the Homepage.
• If you have a shopping cart feature on your site, include a link to it on the Homepage. This allows users to immediately see what they have selected, without having to navigate through any product screens or go through checkout before they are ready to do so.
• Use navigation icons only if they help users to recognize a class of items immediately, such as new items, sale items, or video content. Icons can confuse users.
• Navigation interfaces need to help users answer three fundamental questions of navigation:
  
  1. Where am I?
  2. Where have I been?
  3. Where can I go?
  
  If your web site navigation cannot answer these questions you will want to redesign your navigation interface.