As seen at talentzoo.com.
As an info-geek, I have to admit that one of my favorite parts of website building is creating the navigation. A few days ago, while working on an Intranet project, I came across an interesting philosophy that will probably bore the heck out of many of you. But it was an interesting thought process.
I came across author Jesse James, of The Elements of User Experience fame. He was discussing the two ways to build a website. To be fair, I’m already acquainted with our outlaw-turned-Information-Architect friend. I hadn’t really considered the issues involved here, though. That is, until now.
So here’s how it works: There are two ways to choose those little categories at the top of your home page:
Bottom-Up: Think of all of the possible pages you’ll need for your site. Then, build categories for those pages to fit in.
Top-Down: Consider the main objectives for your site. Then, turn them into categories and subcategories. Finally, fill them with the stuff you need to create a useful site.
Made your choice? I’m sure there’s some sort of Keirsey Personality Test that explains what kind of person you are now. I’d always been a top-down kind of guy (get your mind out of the gutter). After all, you can always add stuff later, if you have the foundation for a good site.
So when I came across a sitemap built from the bottom up, I started noticing issues with it. Sure, all of the right pages were there, but the categories were created to “fit” these pages. They didn’t make sense to people who were visiting this site from the top down. I mean, isn’t that how most people visit a website? The go to the home page, then drill down?
Just in case you’re worried you chose wrong, James says that there is no right or wrong choice. The more I thought about it, though, choosing one or the other would likely leave holes. So I’m here to propose another option for creating the navigation for your website.
1) Brainstorm all possible pages, content tidbits and ideas, listing all of the possible things you want to be included in your site. Keep even the bad stuff. Now, put your list to the side, like rising dough.
2) Start building navigation from the top down, using your site business objectives as guideposts.
3) Once you have the foundation, pull out your nice fluffy dough-list and start filling in the blanks.
This will likely do two things. First, it will help you make sure there are fewer holes in your navigation. Second, it will help you weed out all of those tangential ideas you thought might be useful and allow you to leave in some of the fun concepts that still fit your mold. After all, every site needs a little entertainment value. On #2 above, get as specific as you like when creating your top-down sitemap. The more detail you can get into in top-down, the better your analysis will be on #3.
Yeah, this might be oversimplified, but this is a blog. How do you build your web navigation?