Navigation Rules
1. Menus should be clear-cut and to the point.
- No confusing titles
- No wordy titles
- No unlabeled titles
2. Links should never interfere with content.
- Never any animated links
- Never use garish colors
3. Always let users know where they are within the nav structure.
- Never link to the page you are already on
- Use breadcrumbs
- Use titles
- Use consistency
4. Always let users retrace their steps easily.
- Never link to the page you are already on
- Never break the "back" button
- Use breadcrumbs
5. Uniformity
A. System of navigation.
- Don’t mix and match navigation systems
- In the look
- Use the same fonts.
- Use the same color scheme.
- Use consistent visited link color
B. In the location
- Put the breadcrumbs in the breadcrumb place
- Put the nav rail in the nav rail place
6. Never have undefined categories.
- Other
- Miscellaneous
- Stuff
- Etc.
7. Avoid graphical nav on large sites.
- Hard to maintain
- excessive development time
- excessive space
8. Keep the load time on your navigation system to a minimum.
9. Important pages must be accessible for users with disabilities.
10. Always have the important links above the fold.
- Global links
- Contact us
- Products
11. Always have meaningful text labels for all links.
- Text only browsers
- Good for browsers for the vision impaired
- Good searchbot thing
- Never rely on mouseovers to label links.
- Use link titles as a preview of where each link will go.
12. Keep it simple stupid
- Complexity limits the size of the site.
- Complexity makes it difficult to test.
- Complexity makes it difficult to navigate.
- Complexity makes it difficult to maintain.
- Avoid too many interface elements
- Don't make the user guess where to click.
- No more than 3 clicks to any given page is the rule.
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