Designing Web Navigation

SUMMARY

Navigation and search need not be mutually exclusive activities. There are potentially many ways to integrate the two. For instance, before conducting a search, navigational elements such as search scope menus and word wheels allow people to browse pre-existing categories. This can help avoid getting no results while communicating the breadth and type of information included in the search. Additionally, navigation links themselves can invoke a search via a canned search. Even main navigation links can be canned searches and lead to a dynamic results page instead of a hand-crafted gallery.

After a search is conducted, techniques such as clustering and grouping allow people to refine the results by browsing categories. Clustering automatically groups results into similar sets and creates a label for each set on the fly. With grouping, search results are sorted into predetermined categories. Suggestions for search terms can also be made on the results side of search, as well as recommending top hits manually (also called best bets).

The overall goal of such approaches is to integrate navigation and search for a richer information experience that mirrors how people naturally seek information; namely, they move around, changing strategies rapidly and switching from navigation to search as needed.

Finally, facets offer a powerful alternative to structuring information than hierarchies. It's difficult, however, to create an interface that exposes facets in a way that novices can understand. ...