How people navigate by task flow

By Garth A. Buchholz, BA, CUA
Buchholz Information

In determining site navigation options for Web sites, many Web administrators/developers are satisfied to offer several navigation options to people (e.g. site search + menus + static links) as well as redundant navigation methods (allowing users to choose several ways to arrive at the same content).

However, most people use more than one navigation choice during a single session search for content, and each choice during that session is determined, more often than not, by a specific task flow. For example, if you know what you’re looking for on a retail site, you’ll want to navigate by the product or service categories, but if you encounter problems, you’ll want to navigate by organizational structure (e.g. finding which part of the organization is responsible for a product or service) to seek help.

So in the first case, your navigation is driven by a scenario where you are purchasing something, and in the second case it is driven by a scenario where you are wanting to contact someone or some area of responsibility.

The chart below outlines some general reasons users make navigation choices, although a more refined analysis can be done when one is looking at specific case studies or organizations. Keep in mind that at any stage of the search, depending on the user’ previous experiences, they may give up and abandon their navigation efforts altogether.

Rather than feeling that their own search/navigation methods failed, or are lacking the necessary skills, most people will instead feel frustration, resentment and even anger, and blame the site design or site administrators for their lack of success.

People will use a general search engine to broadly search for specific content within a site when they are not sure which site(s) to search, or when they know which site to search but they are not familiar with it and prefer to search it by keyword. Often this means when they find content, they end up having to backtrack through the site or click through the site to further narrow down their choices.

Many people don’t know that you can use advance search features on search engines to restrict your search query to that site alone. Also, many sites are indexed more thoroughly by external search engines than by their own internal site search engine.

People will use site search (a search tool provided by the site itself) when they are broadly searching for specific content within a site. Some people simply prefer to enter a keyword and search for results, hoping the content they want will appear in the top 10 pages returned by the engine. Others use the site search because the navigation on the site’s homepage is:
• unavailable/not offered on the homepage
• available, but past user experience with it was negative/unsuccessful
• unclear/ambiguous/complicated
• lacks “information scent” or “intuitive” labelling
• not offered as a dropdown/flyout/rollover menu(s)
• offered as a menu but users don’t realize it is a menu
• cluttered with too much information

People use global (or ‘persistent’) static or fixed navigation (links that don’t dropdown or rollout or slideout into menus) when they are looking for general areas of information or high level categories on a site and are willing to go deeper into the site to explore the second level content, scan their navigation options, and gradually narrow their search.

Sitemaps are usually a global static navigation page that provides a high level structural view (usually using text links and very few graphics) of all of the major categories and subcategories found within a single, or even its subsites as well.

People will often look for a Sitemap link on a site when they want to quickly get a sense of what a site contains and how it is structured, especially when the site’s overall structure is not clear, apparent or detailed enough on the homepage or the global menus. Search engines often look for sitemap pages to help them accurately index a site, which is another reason why sitemaps should be kept current and accurate either by manual methods or by a system that updates them dynamically.

People use global (or ‘persistent’) interactive navigation (e.g. dropdown or flyout menus) when they want to view high level categories on a site and see what kind of content those areas contain before making a selection and exploring them further at the second level.

People use organizational-based navigation links (e.g. links to specific departments, divisions or other formal organization units) when they think that they can find information they are seeking within a particular part of the organization offers. They will also use organizational navigation when they are seeking help from someone in the organization on something relating to a particular product or service, i.e. they are navigating by area of responsibility.

People use service-based navigational links when they are seeking content related to a particular service or product, but are either uncertain which part of the organization offers it, or are simply unfamiliar with the organization’s products or services and want to find information that is written or structured in a way that they will understand.

People use graphical navigation (e.g. ads, buttons, icons and other images) when these navigation aids are bright, distinctive, eye-catching and intuitive; also, when text links on a page are confusing, ambiguous, poorly labelled, hard to read or otherwise. However, usability studies have found that text links are still more popular in terms of usage than graphical links, probably because people have a tendency to read text and understand it quickly, while many graphical navigation links can be ambiguous or unclear.

People use forms of breadcrumb navigation when navigation structure on a site is deep and complex, or when they reach a page using another navigation method and realize that they have to go up or down one or more levels to find the content they want. Breadcrumbs do not show as much of a high-level view as sitemaps because they are contextual to where the user is on a site when hey are viewing the chain of breadcrumb links.

People use contextual or local navigation (which can be either static or fixed links or menus or a combination of both) when they reach within a section of a site or within a subsite and want to restrict their continuing navigate efforts to that specific pat of the site to the exclusion of other parts. If this narrowed navigation attempt fails, they will return to broader navigation methods or bailout (abandon their efforts).