Site structure & navigation
Using a website is similar to navigating a supermarket or a city - we rely on signs, together with naming and positioning conventions, to find our way around without getting frustrated. If you're not easily able to find what you're looking for, you might leave frustrated, potentially with a lower opinion of the organisation responsible for the website.
SiteBuilder uses a model we call strict hierarchy. The structure starts with the University home page at the top. One level below are the faculties, study, research and services sections. Below those are the individual department and service websites.
In this article:
Structure
It's useful to sketch your site structure early in a project, before you start any visual design work. The sketch forms the basis of your structure and navigation:
As well as defining the structure clearly, this step helps you understand the scope of your project, giving a sense of the amount of content involved and any new sections you need to create, which can help you plan resources and estimate costs.
- Start at your homepage and work down through each level of information.
- Be logical - group similar sections together and consider how visitors will find information.
- Remember to structure your website based on the results of your audience research.
Don't stop at the second level of your site. Explore how you will group information right down to the lowest level, giving lower-level navigation the same attention as the top. Academic departments, for example, may hold lots of information in lower levels, such as module information pages.
Tip: Visitors are just as likely to spend time on lower-level pages as the top. Remember that many users find sites via search engines, which means they could arrive on a page at any level in the structure. You should not assume that they'll always start at your home page.
Navigation
Clear and consistent navigation is important for two main reasons:
- So that visitors can intuitively find what they're looking for.
- So that visitors have a satisfying experience on your site, which reflects positively on the University.
Together with your site structure, clear navigation labels act as signposts, helping visitors find their way around your website regardless of the level they're currently browsing.
SiteBuilder's navigation bar always displays the user's current location in your site:
The name displayed for a given page in the navigation bar is its Link title, which you assign when creating a page.
Tip: Ensure each page's Link title is clear, unambiguous and unique. That way, your audience can easily understand where they are and quickly navigate to the page they want.
You can choose to show or hide pages in the navigation menu, enabling you to highlight important or useful pages, but hiding those that are less relevant, or that can be accessed via links or buttons in the page content. Additionally, items will only appear in the navigation menu for users who have the required permissions to view them.
Tip: Be as consistent as possible when naming pages, files or images, writing link text, or using iconography - a user should be reasonably certain that two links with similar text lead to the same part of your site, and that each icon you use always has the same meaning when they see it.
This also helps keep your site tidy and easy to maintain - you (and other editors) will be able to tell exactly what something is for without needing to edit a page or view a file directly.
Web conventions
Common navigation conventions across the web include:
- The navigation menu at the top or left-hand side
- A search box at the top right
- The organisation's logo and name at the top left, which also acts as a link to the home page
- The organisation's contact details and/or social media links in the footer
SiteBuilder sites using the University's standard web template are consistent with these conventions, with the navigation bar at the top, the department or service's name at the top left and the Warwick search box at the top right.