Navigation-allow users to "make their way"

How important is navigation? Is it just a simple guide card? Of course not. Navigation occupies an important position in the website architecture. It determines the information scope, category, and retrieval path of the website. A good navigation design will directly improve the availability of the website, thereby enhancing the brand image and the credibility of the website. Therefore, how to make the website users smoothly or even unconsciously "take the trouble" has always been our constant goal.

There are many types of navigation, and the roles will naturally be slightly different. Some can expand the information, while others do the information gathering. The author initially divided the common navigation functions into the following three categories:

1. The overall architecture is laid to show the overall situation of the website:

There are several types of navigation used to classify the station information and display it to users in different levels, so that users can quickly understand the global situation of the website and quickly locate the information they want to find, this is a tiled guide process that is very important for users to perceive the website shape. This type of navigation mainly includes: Global Navigation, partial navigation, website map, utility navigation, and footer navigation.

Global Navigation: It is the navigation with the highest weight in the website architecture. It directs the information architecture of the entire website and determines the website shape and overall information classification. The fixed mode is usually used.

Partial navigation: It is a global navigation that is used to access the lower-level structure. It is often used as a tiled guide for the next branch of the Global navigation. There are many mechanisms for forming partial navigation, such as tree navigation, vertical menus, and dynamic menus.

Website Map: Provides the global information of the website. the user experience is worse than the combination of global navigation and local navigation, but it is very helpful for users to view the website structure.

Utility navigation and footer navigation: These two types of navigation are generally composed of global operation links, such as exiting the system, guiding users to the help system, or switching between various web services of the same company.

2. Follow the behavior path to narrow the information range and implement linear guidance:

After you have browsed the global information, you want to quickly locate an Information Branch, go to the specific function page to enable the task, or go to the content page to browse the required information, in this case, several types of navigation will appear, guiding users to walk in the website linearly. Such navigation includes step-by-step navigation, breadcrumb navigation, search navigation, and flip navigation.

Step-by-Step navigation: It is a typical linear guiding method that allows users to quickly complete tasks step by step.

Bread navigation: Directly records the path of the user accessing the website, indicating the current location and providing a link to return to the upper-level page or the previous access page.

Search navigation: Search-type navigation is an important tool for users to quickly locate content or tasks. By searching and filtering, You can ensure the rapid development of user behavior paths, and avoid the "Nowhere to go" situation.

Flip navigation: Page-turning navigation is more like a tool in the user's browsing behavior. It keeps the user's information level unchanged so that the behavior can continue.

3. Information extension to guide users into a broader world

How can users stay on the website and start a new journey after browsing the content or tasks they are interested in? In this case, the recommendation of relevant information becomes a new task of navigation. Such navigation includes embedded link navigation, adaptive recommendation navigation, and related link navigation.

Embedded link navigation: Expand the user's information in the form of text links based on the context content, or help the user find the source of the information.

Adaptive recommendation navigation: Adaptive recommendation navigation can intelligently match information to achieve relatively precise recommendation guidance.

Navigation: Similar to Adaptive Navigation, it is also a type of associated navigation that allows users to discover more information while they are still trying their best.

To sum up, the navigation design is closely related to user behavior, and different navigation can be provided in different situations. However, some websites have a large amount of information and complex classification. For example, large e-commerce websites may have multi-information classification dimensions and scenarios where classification and tags are used together, as a result, the information of navigation is displayed in various forms. In addition, navigation is closely related to interaction logic and visual styles. Therefore, how to use navigation to better meet users' needs, solving user problems is our constant goal and motivation.