Promise Media

Site navigation largely comes down to three choices.

- Put the main navigation at the top of the page, on the left side or via a combination of both.

- Provide subcategories in the navigation on every page of the site or put them only within each specific section.

- Decide whether to use an expandable navigation with javascript or similar technique.

Our own experiments showed that clickthroughs on side navigation dropped off dramatically below the fold. Putting navigation at the top of the page has a downside as well because the width of the page limits the number of items that can go there. A combination of top and side often ends up being redundant and using valuable space inefficiently.

The answer to navigation placement may be ? it depends. Top navigation makes sense for a site with a relatively small number of main sections. Side navigation is worth considering for a lengthy number of sections that can motivate the reader to scroll. A combination of top and side never quite seems to work and is usually a weak compromise between the two.

The easier questions to address are subcategories and expandable navigation. Some sites put subcategories at the top as javascript dropdowns that sometimes don?t work, add a hefty amount of code to each page and often get in the way of users when they accidentally mouse over the main link. Subcategories on the side are simply too much text and make the side navigation harder to read.

The simple approach always is worth trying. The simple approach with navigation is to use a small number of main categories at the top of the page and hard code the subcategories only within each individual category.