Easy Orientation

[WebsitePatterns]

Problem

It is easy to get lost in the tangle of links that make up a website.

Context

A web site with many cross-links between pages.

Forces

1. People don't use the web like TV or a magazine. They use the web to find information they need and stop browsing once they have found what they set out to look for [1].
2. Users of a web-site do not maintain a mental map of that site while browsing.
3. Users might select a wrong link while looking for the information they need and not be able to find a their way back to the page that contains the link relevant to them.

Solution

Include a link on each page that takes the user to a page that acts as a "vantage point" at which they can reorient themselves.

Resulting Context

If users feel lost in the site, they can easily reorient themselves.

If you need multiple pages that act as vantage points, you can organise them as a TreeStructure.

You can include VisibleContext to help users keep track of where they are in the site.

Known Uses

Many, many sites include links to the home page or to a site map on each page.

Each page on the WikiWikiWeb has links for EasyOrientation. The title of each page links to a list of other pages that refer to the page. The footer of each page has a link to FindPage.

--NatPryce

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Observation: Many people have trouble navigating tree structures. In their own minds two concepts may be linked, whereas on your site they may have to go up and then down - this is frustrating. Better to have hubs of main pages, then other hubs of content, each page of which links back to the main hub. Rapid download and rapid navigation are the most important things to many people.