Now that’s better: thenextwomen.com
Tyranny of the alphabet – The Next Women
To those with tidy minds, a website’s main navigation must cry out for alphabetisation – what could be easier to use?
This is obviously what those behind The Next Women website – ‘Business magazine for female internet heroes’ – feel:
A veteran book editor recently expressed shock at the idea that the main navigation of his professional society’s website wouldn’t go from A to Z: ‘Surely it should be like an index?’
Usability
But the function of a website’s navigation is different from the function of an index. In the latter, all the items have equal weight. So, in The Next Women’s case, the Archive is just as important as Upcoming Events and Contact is on the same level as Female Internet Heroes. But this is nonsense in terms of usability.
Navigation links should be ordered according to their importance and frequency of use, following the universally accepted first place position for Home. Second in line is often About – a useful placing if you want to make it easy for new visitors to familiarise themselves with you or your organisation from the off.
Importance v. finding
Another candidate for second position could be the one item on your website that will lead to more return on investment – monetary or non-transactional. This could be your leading product or your organisation’s directory, in which members advertise their availability for work (as in Simone’s List on The Next Women’s site).
Other navigational items follow, with FAQs and Links often bringing up the rear.
Remember: navigation links work best by indicating importance; an index is concerned with finding … anything and everything.
PS
On The Next Women site, the Female Internet Heroes are listed in alphabetical order. No complaints there. But oddly enough the heroes are listed by first name, not last, so Arianna (Huffington) heads the list and Tara (Hunt) concludes it. The exception is Queen Elizabeth, who is alphabetised under ‘Queen’…