If a former librarian and current Human Factors Engineer with LexisNexis can’t tell us what good web navigation design is, no-one can. James Kalbach is an expert in his field and O’Reilly had him write a book on a subject that we all take for granted but which we feel frustrated about when it has been badly done. If you thought Web Navigation design was something every web master has in his fingers, think again.

A good first part of the book is spent by Kalbach showing examples of good and bad web navigation, and trying to explain what exactly navigation is, and how it relates to both the site structure and the user experience. The author covers the various theoretical models of seeking, and lets various other experts in human interface design and information seeking theory and technologies speak about sub topics.

This approach not only makes the book more interesting, it also makes for a less “heavy” read.

All the possible navigation possibilities are discussed, including navigation bars, tree-like navigation lists, buttons, etc. Also covered are the locations where you should and should not design your navigation elements. In areas such as these, the author elaborates on related, but slightly different topics, that again add to the value of the book. An example is the coverage of banner blindness.

Practical Advice

Kalbach says: “Merely making an option available on a page, however, is no guarantee that people will see it. Jan Panero Benway and David M. Lane, researchers at Rice University, brought the term banner blindness to the attention of the web community in 1998. Before this study appeared, conventional wisdom predicted that the larger an item was, the more attention it attracted.”

Further down the same page, the author states: “Navigation behavior and information need has a large impact on whether banner blindness occurs.” And again he brings in recent research, this time from a Berlin study. The book is filled with such quotes, and with the necessary footnotes, so the reader can be sure the author isn’t just jumping to conclusions, based on his own beliefs and observations.

All this research and theory make the book an interesting read, but it doesn’t make it usable to web masters who want to know how they best approach the problem of web page navigation. However, pretty much all of the second half of the book is spent on practical advice based on the first part’s conclusions.

For example, Kalbach says that when navigating your site, visitors should be informed about what’s going on. “The navigation system you design gives them cues as to how to navigate through the site.” And then he goes on explaining about rollovers as visual clues to where they will be going, and showing the location of a page within a site as a clue to where they come from. Most web masters know this part of the navigation equation very well.

What they may not know is that it makes sense to duplicate links to the same destination.

The book finally also contains a generous section on business sites and the way the developers of such sites should plan, organise and manage the navigation elements on these large sites in order to fulfil the business goals.

Designing Web Navigation is an interesting read for everybody involved in web design. It is a useful reference for those of us who want to create the best web experience and the knowledge it contains can make a difference especially for business sites.