Content First - Page 6
August 23, 2001
A general principle of our page design has been "content first,
clutter last". Well, maybe not exactly 'clutter' — but
stuff like ads and menus are less important to the user than the
page content — most of the time. One very important,
special user class deserves mention here — search engine
spiders. We want to help them figure out what the page is about,
and they are guided most by what comes earliest on the page. So
the navigation menu is on the right, which also usually lessens
the distance a user's mouse has to travel to and from the
vertical scroll bar (usually on the right). I think it's also
more helpful for blind users who hear the page via screen readers
or feel it on braille writers — they don't have to wait for
the menu before getting to the content. The problems with left-
side margins are:
- If the user's window is narrower than the page width, the
right side of the page is clipped; the text needs to be moved
back into view using the scroll bar. However if it's the
navigation menu it's less of an annoyance.
- Non-graphical browsers (Lynx; HTML-to-speech; etc.) will
usually render the page text in the order it is presented —
i.e. the order it comes out of the file — which is often a
substantial amount of navigation stuff. The user will be forced
to plow through a bunch of junk before they reach the content.
- Search engines typically give greater weight to keywords in
the earlier part of the page; again, navigation margin contents
appear first and skew the results because they relate to other
pages than the present one. Also search engine results often
display the first part of the page in response to user queries.
Navigation menu contents are not much help.
One of the major problems in a site with a lot of content, is how
to present it without overwhelming the user. If you bury it down
in the navigation structure, many people may never realise it's
there. One way to solve the navigation problem would be to put
links to all available pages, on the home page. Your visitor
could reach every page with a single click. However, this is
impractical for sites with hundreds or thousands of pages; there
are further requirements such as keeping the home page fast-
loading and not too complicated. Putting it all on the home page
may make it too cluttered. The most important navigational device
for any Web site is the home page. This page alone is most likely
to be the one that determines whether your visitors view one
page, or many, at your site. If it doesn't offer any clue that
this site has valuable information, and how to locate it, then
people are unlikely to expend much effort to track it down. If on
the other hand, the home page gives clear indications about
what's available at the site, and how to get to it, then your
user's interest is likely to last longer. The conventional
approach is to provide a few links to the next level down, from
the home page, supplemented with a small selection of
representative links from the next level down. An important
question to answer is "How many clicks will it take my visitors
to find anything?". People's patience begins to fade very soon
after a few clicks; but you probably don't want a very large
number of links on every page.
Compromising between Too Little and Too Much
I think we have found a reasonable compromise: put the top two or
three levels on the home page, and break it up with large main
topic headings. Users can see at a glance what the overall site
structure is, and they can quickly and easily zoom in on areas of
interest. Perhaps we could use some neat
JavaScript
rollovers or pop-up menus, but I think that the standard window
controls (i.e. the vertical scroll bar) serves well enough
without introducing browser compatibility problems. Finally,
notice the
search boxes
in the bottom right of the page. If all else fails, the user can
search our site or the Web. A visitor can see very quickly what
the site is about, by scanning this table. In many instances they
will see immediately a keyword for the topic they are interested
in learning about. Occasionally, they may need to select the most
appropriate area to explore deeper. We feel that for an
information-rich site such as ours, this large (but not massive)
collection of links reduces the conceptual impedance (resistance)
for most of our visitors. It's a kind of rapid-transit system.
It's not for everyone — a few might find it confusing. Some
people need relatively verbose explanations before they are
comfortable with something like that. I confess that I don't
understand their problem very well, and I hope one day to see
usability studies exploring these issues.
Accessibility and Usability - Page 5
Design and Architecture of a Content-Rich Web Site
Follow the Traffic - Page 7
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