[thelist] Cooper on navigation

Joel D Canfield joel at spinhead.com
Wed Oct 10 01:06:55 CDT 2001


I have the impresson he's saying that, when it comes to navigation
structure, flatter is better. That makes sense to a point, but I'm not sure
that extensive navigation structure has a negative effect on a site's
success. Some interesting comments, though, some of which are dead on - I
used to 'browse' Amazon.com for fun. Now, I look up the book I want, and buy
it - at buy.com (until two weeks ago their prices were 10%-20% lower every
time.) I'm not altruistic enough to give my business to the site with the
best search engine, but I'm not going to waste time with a lousy search
engine to save a few dollars when I can pop over to another site and find
what I want. Now that Amazon.com has lower prices, I search there, and buy
there.

My personal experience with e-commerce has been that I'll find something
however I can, but I'll buy from the lowest priced reputable dealer. That
contradicts the fear that a site with poor navigation won't do as much
business. Am I a minority?

As for informational sites, I agree with the article's point. When I go to
Merriam Webster's site, or search for song lyrics or a bit of historical
trivia, I don't want to 'browse' thru someone's site. I want to see what I
came for on the first page I see.

We have a Request for Purchase Order app on our intranet. After the user
logs in, they're presented with a 'tools' page which lists all the functions
that can be done. One more click and they're seeing what they came for. At
most, a second click and the necessary form is submitted . There's not a
path thru the system that takes more than two pages after the login. With
judicious use of IE6's abilities, we may eventually eliminate 'navigation'
completely and present the appearance of a single page providing all the
necessary services.

joel at spinhead.com

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Madhu Menon
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 9:58 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] Cooper on navigation


Alan Cooper of Cooper Interaction Design has a new article online.

I quote:

"The artless Websites created during the Web's infancy were of necessity
built only with simple HTML tags, and were forced to divide up their
functionality and content into a maze (a web?) of separate pages. This made
a navigation scheme an unavoidable component of any Website design, and of
course, a clear, visually arresting navigation scheme was better than an
obscure or hidden one. But many Web designers have incorrectly deduced from
this that users want navigation schemes. Actually, they'd be happy if there
were no navigation at all."

URL: http://makeashorterlink.com/?N2C91231

I'll comment a little later, but I thought you would find it interesting.

Regards,

Madhu

<<<   *   >>>
Madhu Menon
User Experience Consultant
e-mail: webguru at vsnl.net

Weblog: http://madman.weblogs.com






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