January 01, 2002
Global Navigation Systems
Help Users Find Their Way Home
"Global navigation system" may sound high-concept, but it's actually as simple as this: let your users jump around your site without clicking through levels of hierarchy. An "up and down" hierarchy is important, but supplementing it with a "side to side" global navigation system is better.
Global navigation systems can be as simple as a navigation bar. Let's say your site has three main sections: About Us, Catalog, and Contact Us. On the main page for each of those sections, or "second level pages," you would include a navigation bar with links to your site's front page (first level) and the other two sections' front pages (second level). You might leave the nav bar off your site's front page, since it probably links to the three second level sections anyway. If your site is small, you could implement a simple global navigation system by putting a link back to the front page on every page.
A more complex global navigation system would include those links to About Us, Catalog, and Contact Us on all their pages, not just the second level ones. For instance, a product's page within the Catalog section would have links to the front page and all three second level pages. It's up to you to decide whether this is necessary for your site.
Designers get creative
Some sites depend on a visual hierarchy to show users where they are, like Yahoo's pages that always include something like "Top: Regional: Countries: United States." Rather than rely on the visual hierarchy idea, some designers of global navigation systems alter the site's navigation bar. This page is an example from Information Architecture for the Word Wide Web. The "@" sign next to What We Do indicates that the Publications page is located within the What We Do section of the site. The What We Do link is active; it goes to the main What We Do Page.
Some designers dim out the button representing the current section, partially so that pages do not link to themselves. Another design option is a "tab" metaphor; the navigation tab representing the section the user is in will be a different color than the other tabs in the navigation bar. Whatever you do, don't remove the navigation element that represents the section the user is in. According to navigation expert Jennifer Fleming, this well-intentioned move is harmful to navigation, not helpful.
If you skipped the page before this, see Help People Find Themselves for other ideas about showing users where in your site they have landed.
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