DoingMedia

Should navigation for a website be on the left or right side? That was question posed by a friend.

One of our directors has a significant other who has been doing web work for us at a very reduced price. He tells us that the new site needs to have the menu selections on the right side, that that is where people look first.  I must be weird, because that is not where I look first.  When I surf around the web, I see very few that are not on the left side.  Do you have any links or information that would clear up this particular issue?

The right side is not a prevalent menu location. Here’s a link to a study about it — http://www.leveltendesign.com/blog/general/by-brent/usability-study-for-right-side-website-menu-location/.

What he may be referring to is how people scan web pages. The pattern is called the “Z”. Starting at the top left corner people typically scan slightly diagonally across the page to the right side. They usually pause here for a split second to see what’s there. Then they scan across the page to the left side and check that out. Then they scan to the center of the page and see what’s there. If nothing is interesting in any of these places they then go elsewhere.

The right side/edge/column of a page is usually reserved for news or links to featured content on information sites -or- advertising links on commercial sites. Main navigation usually appears at the top or left side. (I will sometimes place navigation to the main site sections at the top of the page and then use the left column for navigation within a section.) The center of the page is reserved for primary content although that can chunked up into columns or boxes, especially on home and main section pages.

Putting the main navigation on the right side would make the site distinctive and could be interesting from a design perspective. If the site were about design it could be a good idea.

The important thing is to remember the audience for the site. What do they expect when they arrive at the site? I would guess they are comng to the site for information either because they searched or were referred by another site or got the URL from a friend or brochure. How old would these visitors be? Men or women? What is their experience on the web?

Making some assumptions I would guess the visitors to your site are 30s or above, men and women, with varying web experience based on their age. They have a need for information. I don’t think they want to figure out a site’s navigation. So, I would vote for top or left navigation.

Keep it simple, basic and present the best information you can. This is a case, I think, where Function follows Form.

My friend Susan Reetz asked about her site keywording. She had her site analyzed at the “Extreme Makeover: Website Edition” session at the MCA-I ProTrack conference in September and the presenter (Susan Price from MediaRich) noticed that her site pages had no keyword or other meta tagging. My friend’s web guy said “Oh, don’t bother with keywords, Google ignores them.” Uh, yeah, but what about the rest of the meta and content I thought? So I replied back to her with my Pyramid of Information Architecture spiel. (I’ll add a drawing later, but here it is in text form.)

               +  Filename  +

            ++    Keywords    ++

         ++++    <title> tag    ++++

      +++++++    Description    +++++++

  +++++++++    Page Title <h1>    +++++++++

++++++++++++    Body Content    +++++++++++++

Think of the information architecture of a web page like a pyramid (not inverted - I’ve never gotten the whole journalism inverted pyramid thing.). The tip of the pyramid is the file name: a one, maybe two, word name of the actual HTML formatted file. In my example it would be “non-profit.htm” (or whatever your pages are coded in.)

Next is are the keywords. Although search engines don’t use them for ranking anymore, it doesn’t hurt to add keywords to the meta “Keyword” or “Subject” tags, just don’t overdo it. The keywords provide a concise description of the page. In my example the keywords might be: non-profit, communication, video, media. (You can test keywords at Google. They have a keyword tool that lets you enter search terms and then shows you how many results might come back.)

The next level of the pyramid is the <title> tag. Here you describe the page in plainer English . Keep it short and sweet and include your branding. I prefer to put the page title first then the branding so the title appears in the search result clearly. The <title> might be something like “Non-Profit Solutions - Rucinsk & Reetz Communications.” Waaay too many sites have pages titled “Default” or “Untitled”. When I create a page the first thing I do is put in the title. A good site information architecture diagram will have the title defined before coding begins.

Next up is the meta “description”. This should be one clear, simple sentence that describes your page. (The <title> and “description” are what is displayed as the search result.) A description for our example might “Non-profits need effective communication almost more than any other kind of organizations because of their limited resources.”

Then you have the Page Title contained in the <h1>. That is the top level Header tag and that’s what it’s for, the page title. It should match what’s in the <title> tag, sans the branding. So we would have “Non-Profit Solutions”.

Last is the content of the page itself. It should use the same language and tone as the <title> and “description” and should include the keywords within the content. Sprinkle the keywords judiciously in the content to continually reinforce what the page is about.

A colleague passed this post from SEOMmoz.org on to me — 11 Best Practices for URLs — and it seemed to tie the whole URL naming issue up with a nice little bow. The author even addresses the sub-optimal URLs (http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1422) they use for the site.

Besides not posting for weeks (yes weeks) I realized that, so far, we’ve definitely had an online tilt to things (such as they are) here at Doing Media. Well, that’s got to change — but not yet.

So… I teach media communications courses, among them “Web Publishing.” Pretty broad topic but essentially it’s web production 101. For my students, naming their pages and their files (URLs) is part of our Information Architecture module.

It takes them awhile to get it because at this point in website consumption They take it for granted. They don’t notice page titles or URLs because I think they figure it’s the luck of the draw — if they bookmark a page they’ll figure it out later if it doesn’t come with a good title or URL. If it does have something understandable in the browser title bar or address box it’s a bonus!

Once I point out why good page naming and file (and folder) naming is good for them and for their visitors there is always an ‘A-ha!” moment. And so it’s interesting that after all these years of web site production professionals still have these conversations and reminders of best practice.

Read on. And I promise we’ll get to less online-ish stuff soon. No, really.

Bob Boiko, author of the Content Management Bible, has an excerpt from his forthcoming ebook about audience analysis in the latest Content Management Professionals (CM Pros) August 2006 newsletter.

I’m not sure I could have added much to his take on audience analysis. But without a good answer to “What do I want achieve?” you can’t even begin your audience analysis.

But more on that later.