Setting Up Website Navigation

Tackling a website redesign for your library can be overwhelming but thanks to the Build A Better Library Website Bootcamp you can reference each lesson as a resource for every step of the website building process. The lessons are free to all New Jersey library employees and you have the option to take the course in full or hone in on certain lessons that pertain to your needs. As we outline each lesson from the bootcamp, we hope it’s a good jumping point for each topic and encourages you to turn to the course for more in-depth information. Last time we covered Creating the Ideal Website Layout. After you’ve settled on the right layout for your website, you’ll want to focus on navigation. A website can be full of information, but it’s worth nothing if that information is hard to find!

Card Sorting

Navigation is the findability of information on your website. Users will use the tools that you make available to them such as a search bar, filters or a menu to find the content that they’re looking for. If you’ll recall, we covered the UX, or user experience, in a previous lesson recap and when you’re figuring out how to structure your website and navigation, card sorting is a good technique to utilize for understanding how your users think about content. Card sorts reveal how people organize, categorize and label the information on your website. Once you understand how your user thinks and searches for information, you can create navigation that caters to the user’s brain. An open card sort is useful when building a brand new navigation. You give a participant index cards with a single piece of content or a webpage written on each card, and they’re given an amount of time to sort the cards and give each group of cards a label. A closed card sort is great for testing how successful a navigation menu is. This is when you give the user those same index cards but rather than leaving the group cards blank, they’re filled out. If the user groups the index cards as you anticipated, you’ll see how effective your current navigation is.

Main Menu Structures

Once you have an idea of what your information architecture should look like—or the organizing and defining of the relationships between the content—that’s when you can really dive into the structure of your menu.

• A category-based menu uses nouns as labels. Ex) Books, Media, Events, Research
• An audience-based menu groups the content by who it’s relevant for. Ex) Adults, Teens, Children, Seniors
• A task-based menu uses verbs as labels and has a call to action. Ex) Find, Explore, Attend

Whatever structure you choose, keep it consistent throughout the website. The main navigation menu should be no more than 5-9 items. Avoid using jargon for labels, make terminology and labels clear to users.

Additional Organization Tools

In addition to your main menu, you might want to add other tools for the user to be able to find content. Displaying related links on a page can help guide them to other content they might be interested in. A secondary navigation sidebar or search bar in the header can allow patrons to find what they need more directly. Keeping basic information like technical support, policy info, contact information in the footer of your website can free up navigation menus. Filters can allow users to narrow content down to fewer results, simplifying the scanning of information. Overall, it’s always good practice to have clear organization to your page’s content so even a casual browser can navigate. Utilize headers and label topics clearly, keep popular content at the top, break up the information through relevant images and summarize when there’s a lot of text to read. Keeping it direct and simple allows for all website visitors to navigate your information with ease.