Navigation blindness
Thursday, January 6th, 2005 |
Dave Nolan |
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Most users don’t care about the structure of your website. They are highly goal-directed and follow a simple stategy:
Does this page have what I’m looking for? Yes: stop. No: Does this page have a link to what I’m looking for? Yes: follow that link. No: click the “back” button.
This is repeated until the user reaches their personal threshold of frustration. Then it’s off somewhere else.
What are the implications of navigation blindness?
- Navigation has to be prominent
- Linking to every section from every page is at best pointless and at worst counterproductive
- A large number of links with a high proportion of keywords is more effective
