I’ve been re-exposed to “industry” web design practices while staying with some friends in Germany who work at a large agency. In particular, I’ve seen that hierarchical navigation and site organization tactics are no distant memory. A lot of clients still come to the table with an org chart and ask their designer to implement the same structure on their website. The result is a website that reads like an office directory in the skyscraper lobby. Or the hierarchy approach can lead to terms that simply block customers from finding what they want. For example, my friend did some work for a shoe company who wished to hide six different kinds of shoes behind a gate called “Performance”. When my friend asked 40 uninvolved people in his office what the category “performance” meant to them, only 10 had even a vague idea. So hierarchies have their problems. What other organizing methods could we consider instead?
Instead of thinking in terms of hierarchy or up-front structure, I think it’s better to work with paths. A path is a line that goes from a starting point A to an accomplishment B. Each customer who comes to the site doesn’t care about the overall structure. They care about getting from A to B. That’s a path. Where are your golf shoes? That’s a path. Does my cell phone support international calling? That’s a path. Collect all the paths you can think of in a pile, pull out the 8 paths that 80% of your visitors come looking for, and that’s your home page. When paths overlap or the same customer needs them, weave them together. Add the occasional fork. DRY out paths with lots of overlapping information for efficiency. These operations feel concrete, and they connect directly with customer goals instead of organizational box drawings or hand-wavy concepts.
Lines are better than boxes for mapping the contours of your domain. So next time you work with a hierarchy-minded group, try to pull them out of the boxes and talk with them about individual starting points and goals for their customers.
Guan Yang
on 18 May 08Hierarchies suck, but sometimes they are a part of the reality of an organization. One thing I don’t like is type of corporate website where the only type of navigation is paths like “Consumer”, “Small Business”, “Enterprise”, or the type of school/university website where you can choose between resources for “Prospective students”, “Current students”, and “Researchers”. What if I want to find the CEO’s office or the website of the physics department?
My point (I think) is that sometimes the hierarchy is well understood by both those inside the organization and those on the outside who interact with it, even if the categories do not make a lot of sense. When that’s the case, the elements of the hierarchy are actually common tasks that a site visitor wants to complete and should also be implemented as paths.
“Performance” sounds silly, but sometimes it’s easier to look for the Accounts or Customer Service department rather than try to look through a list of task-based paths.
Marvin Miller
on 18 May 08Examples of path-based sites?
Wim Leers
on 18 May 08This discussion really is about the logical organization of a website, i.e. it must be organized in such a way that:
- it makes sense to the largest possible group of people
- it takes the user the least possible amount of time to find what he’s looking for.
That does not rule out using hierarchies, IMO. When your hierarchy is well designed and you use the right representation, hierarchies do work.
See my Hierarchical Select demo for an of a good representation.
Nollind Whachell
on 18 May 08Ya paths equate to task, flow, or purpose. People have a specific need in mind and don’t want obstacles in their way in achieving that need.
Personally I don’t think the problem is so much hierarchies but the names used for these sections. I mean like you said, “Performances” is absurd. KISS is the way to go.
I guess if I could sum this up, I’d say instead of a hierarchy only for your site, you should be creating a network of links within your site (with multiple ways or paths to these different areas). For example, sure build your default navigation with the usual hierarchy (but with simple naming conventions). Then on top of that add links to the pages of your site that focus or highlighting these task paths that people often take.
Zee
on 18 May 08Definitely makes sense Ryan – I would have to say though that convincing a site owner to only go down the ‘path’ route would simply give them the impression we were looking for shortcuts. So i think combining both elements of site planning/organisation is advisable.
Paul Smith
on 18 May 08One other problem with this thinking is that sometime people don’t have a path at all. They don’t realy know what they’re looking for, and the site needs to help them understand that. In other words you might be looking for a new computer. Most people have little or no idea what they need or what they are looking for end their endpoint is simply understanding what the product or service is. This leaves many possible paths for many different types of people so it might make sense to have more of a hierarchical navigation. I guess what I’m saying is that there should be no steadfast rule, but instead you need to look at your target audience and find the best way to engage your user. Which brings me to another point.
Wim Leers said,
“This discussion really is about the logical organization of a website, i.e. it must be organized in such a way that: - it makes sense to the largest possible group of people - it takes the user the least possible amount of time to find what he’s looking for.” This is definitely not always true. A lot of times you need to sell the product and that means marketing it and making the person want to buy that product or service. In that case you may need short and sweet or you may need a site or page that is a little more in depth with more information. That doesn’t necesarily mean getting them to where they want quickly. It may mean finding a way to sell that product in a way that makes them WANT to dig deeper. Anyway I’m just rambling at this point.
Wim Leers
on 18 May 08Paul Smith: we’re looking at this from different perspectives: you from marketing, I from usability.
Paul Smith
on 18 May 08Well I think they both need to come together sometimes. Usability can lead to better experiences. I guess I’m saying that a good way to do things is to find a way to sell the product and make it easy to find and explore the selling points. BTW I like that demo you linked to. I don’t know how I’d use it off the top of my head, but it’s very cool for sure :)
"David"
on 19 May 08Here is a good example of a path. When I want to read an absurd oversimplifcation of an issue, I go directly to Signal Versus Noise. 90% of the time I can be assured of an oversimplified cliche. 10% of the time I find something truly useful, which is why I keep coming back.
LoafOfPaint
on 19 May 08Well, the site we have at work is 20,000 pages, mostly of medical information… it’s either hierarchy or “just forget clicking around and search.” We’re trying to figure out if many smaller sites would be a better solution, but we’re still going to end up with thousands of pages on one of them. For navigating, that leaves the hierarchy as our best bet… though search is probably still more useful for this sort of mass-information site.
But the hierarchy doesn’t have to be “the structure of the organization,” it can be “the structure of the information” or “the structure that various visitors presume” and either of those may make more sense than the org chart.
Anonymous Coward
on 19 May 08Loaf, have you checked to see how often all those 20,000 pages are accessed? I worked on a project once where this client thought they needed all their 22,000 pages, but it turns out 73% of those pages weren’t accessed once in the past 18 months.
Nathan Bowers
on 19 May 08“Navigation” is dead. It stopped scaling and then Google trained us all to use search instead.
That said, Ryan’s advice is solid and certainly beats the “org chart” approach to navigation. Still, even with great nav, you’ve got to have a search engine to know what people are looking for.
It’s good to help users meet their objectives, but it’s even more important to help them meet your objectives. What’s the most important thing you’re selling? Drive users to that. Are you trying to build a relationship with users? Drive them to your newsletter signup form or RSS feed.
David Barrie
on 19 May 08Really interesting post.
Often we seem to behave on the basis of paths, rather than heirarchies. Just look at the way we move around public spaces, creating ‘desire paths’, rather than following the route set down by planners. The potential qualities of a specific space seem animated by how we engage with it. More here .
Jack
on 19 May 08Not excatly agree with path ‘cause what if you starting to have many paths that may cross each other and how do you manage that with some sort of hierarchy map ?
Duskpony
on 19 May 08We often get to work with customers who want everything in their website! Info Architecture doesnt help much because we end up creating deep or broad menus anyways.
So it should be a balance between hierarchies(with correct menu titles) and quick access to frequent paths. So overall its good if the user knows he is closer to completing his task
Blaz
on 19 May 08There is of course a solution to this problem and you can find it all over the net.
“Provide multiple paths to the same destination”
For example you can provide different navigations to the same page based on different attributes.
Take a look at http://www.designofsites.com/pb/B1.html
There are also downsides to this kind of navigating. You quickly get a lot of clutter.
Vesa M
on 19 May 08What is actually wrong with hierarchies is that they are constructed to accommodate every single thing to a structure. And as commented before, the user should not need to face the problem of where a certain function sits in hierarchy (which she does when she faces that hierarchy on e.g. a website).
In a poorly designed grocery store (not a virtual one but an actual one!) you need to know that a certain kind of orange juice is shelved under “industrial comestibles” and look for it there instead from where the other juices are.
In a well designed grocery store you have all kinds of juices in same context placed along the path.
Sure, the juices will form some kind of hierarchy with all the other stuff in the store (and people categorize stuff unconsciously all the time), but it is more flat and does not need to speak out the other hierarchy that does not relate to the context. (Where if you have your products placed “comestibles, industrial comestibles, organic comestibles” and down from there you would need to keep all the branches in mind to find what you are looking for—and same time that makes browsing in a store quite a pain).
Dale Sande
on 19 May 08All these points are true and providing multiple ways for a user to reach the same goal will only ensure that your users are doing what you need them to accomplish. But in many cases, much like Amazon, to much can really be overwhelming. I for one think that Amazon is a nightmare. If it wasn’t for their search, I would never shop there.
Who searches by department? When I am shopping online I don’t want to ‘window’ shop. That is for mall rats. I have a product in mind and I know what I am looking for and I am looking for the shortest path possible to get there. Search.
Then all the suggestive selling based on my previous purchases. No sale their either. I typically shop online for others and no necessarily myself.
I am a believer in ‘less is more’. I try to work with my clients to reduce the amount of navigation in a site, but this is often meet by some resistance as people are not used to this idea. They feel that the only way that someone is going to find that product is if it is in a physical department or that content is in a specific section.
Break the mold. Reduce navigation, but provide solid means for users to find their content. Use smart tagging solutions and allow content navigation to manage itself. Be smart about keywords and descriptions and leverage internal search technologies.
I applaud Apple in their site design. The reduced the emphasis on navigation and make it really simple and action based. They asked themselves, “what do we really want our customers to find in out site?” Then they made it very clear as to how to do that. Then for all the other information in the site, they developed a very intuitive search feature that gave you specific results based on your search, not just a list of related pages.
This was genius. This was bold. This was great!
When you dig into it, there are thousands of pages in the Apple site. If Apple were to go to a hierarchy navigation, it would look like the Microsoft site. Instead they thought more about what they needed to communicate and leveraged new design concepts and information architecture to really bring it home for the user.
I think that all ecommerce and information based sites could learn lessons from this example. Manage your baseline navigation then let all the other pieces fall into place. FInd ways to condense navigation areas. Use metaphors for collective areas of content. Leverage tag based solution to allow pages of content to naturally collect versus specifically managing a hierarchy.
Christophe Stoll
on 19 May 08Great discussion! :-) Some time ago, we created a simple step-by-step, question-based “download finder” for NIVEA brand management to “hide” the very complex and hierarchical logic behind it. If you’re lucky, you’ll find the logo that is appropriate for your purpose within 1-2 clicks without the danger of getting lost within a huge table full of data. In some cases, you need 5-6 clicks, but all within a tiny and fast interface and you can go back or reset easily if you cannot see what you were looking for.
Whatever, I’m not saying this is a great example for path navigation, but at least we had things in mind that are part of this discussion when we were working on it, so I decided to post it here. All kind of feedback is highly appreciated.
Today, I think we would use this kind of navigation for the whole platform (instead of just “nesting” the logo path interface within a more classical navigational concept). I think the majority of users knows pretty well what they are looking for when visiting this kind of site, so it is possible to anticipate a lot of potential paths (apart from providing different paths to the same result, of course).
John
on 19 May 08@Dale
Apple sells 4-5 major products and their accessories. They also have documentation.
Amazon sells everything.
Apple makes you think they’re genius, but really they are just simple.
Amazon makes you think they’re stupid, but they have the lion’s share of their market.
Kelly
on 19 May 08Well said. I wish more business owners would read this article. It is all about how consumers access their sites, not only about how the business owners access their own site.
Anonymous Coward
on 19 May 08John Apple is one of the top 5 online retail stores in the US. Also – Apple is genius because it’s simple. Leonardo Di Vinci said it best, Simplicity is the the ultimate sophistication.
John
on 19 May 08@AC
uh, no. iTunes is not the Apple website. Without iTunes (one of those 4 or 5 major products/accessories), Apple is definitely NOT a top 5 online store. They probably do less than Overstock.com without iTunes.
Leonardo DA Vinci also said: “yo mama”, thus proving he is unreliable.
David
on 19 May 08Wearing the troll hat is not only humorous but an honor on this site. Since I’ve been labeled a troll, here’s a little meat to add to my earlier comments. Might it be that it is not as simple as “hierarchies versus paths”? Might the two overlap? Might some large companies require both, i.e. an intelligent division of hierarchies, with “paths” within the hierarchies (i.e. GE Appliances might be a hierarchy AND a path, and once their consumers might follow paths.
BTW, what does creating a category of “performance” have to do with hierarchies??? That’s a typical example of making the evidence fit a simplistic theory. “Performance” could in fact be a path, it’s just a poorly chosen one. Then the author claims that golf shoes is a path. Huh? It’s no more of a path than performance, it’s just a better chosen one.
Oops, there I go again trolling.
Roby Fitzhenry
on 19 May 08I think the most important tool on any site is a robust and WORKING search tool. If users want to peruse .. they can peruse. But as soon as they are ready to find something specific, the search box should be there and ready.
Dale Sande
on 20 May 08@Roby
Exactly. My point with the Apple versus Amazon comment was just that. Instead of installing extreme hierarchical levels of navigation, install search features and interactive ‘finding’ solutions that allow users to customize their experience.
Web sites have gotten larger and larger and continue to get even larger. Yes, Amazon sells EVERYTHING and for that reason they need to abandon their need for an ancient means of site navigation and allow the chosen path of the consumer dictate their own experience.
Build that powerful search, trap keywords and build a synonym library. Pay attention to what your users are searching for and use their words to give them what they are looking for.
Reduce the clutter. Make the path clear for your users.
Liza Cunningham
on 20 May 08The path metaphor is a good one for determining user behavior. But the hierarchy is still necessary whether the end user sees it or not. The noun (or structure) and the verb (pathway) are equally important. The visual metaphor that comes to mind is cities (noun) connected by highway (verb).
Speed, stumble or walk along the highway you are still traveling from city to city toward a goal. When there are too many paths, user choices, and company objectives competing (just like in city/highway planning) a site becomes congested and overcomplicated.
It hard to say whether a path (highway) comes before a hierarchy (city). Its a bit chicken and egg. But, agreed, the path should be considered with equal importance to the structure.
Mark Priestap
on 23 May 08Couldn’t agree more.
Matt Balara
on 24 May 08Being the “friend in Germany”, I can say that with quite a lot of endurance, we convinced the client to drop their internal organisational word “Performance” and use instead less mysterious labels for the site hierarchy. “Performance” is a concept which groups different product managers, but users looking for shoes understand “Outdoor”, “Walking”, “Running” and “Golf” much better, which are the labels we used.
I can’t imagine my clients throwing out hierarchies, and wouldn’t recommend it either. But there’s a lot of room for exploring paths (or piles & filters) to supplement the hierarchy. That’s what we were trying out with the Shoefinder we built for the client.
Last thought: hunters need paths, gatherers need hierarchies.
This discussion is closed.