Web Development Ethiopia

People have a variety of default assumptions about where a link leads, depending on how it’s presented.

In most cases, people assume a link will take them to another page on the same site unless something indicates otherwise.

Thus, if you have a link that goes to an external site, make sure the link label is very clear to that effect or that the link visually indicates this, such as by being grouped with other obviously external links.

See-Also Links
People also generally assume that a link will take them somewhere within the same branch of the hierarchy that they’re currently in, usually to a deeper level, unless something in the presentation clearly indicates otherwise.

Thus, if you display an expanded outline, users won’t be surprised if a link in the outline takes them to the appropriate other location in the hierarchy, but they’ll be quite surprised if they click on one of the subnav options and find themselves in a completely different branch of the hierarchy.

This problem presents itself when you have topics that naturally fall into more than one category.

In this case, one of the simplest solutions is to pick a “primary” category for that topic, and in any other category, omit it as a normal navigation option, but present it as a “See also” link, which alerts the user that the link will go elsewhere.

Scope and Scope Notes
When people come to a site, they want to know what they will be able to find on the site. This is the scope of the site.

What does the site cover? What is not included on the site? How much have I seen? What portion or how much remains to be viewed?

People can feel overwhelmed when they have no way to estimate how much information is available on a site.

They have trouble determining when to stop looking when they can’t gauge how much they’ve seen or how much more remains.

They can’t correctly evaluate whether to postpone the search until later if they believe they’ve already seen almost everything.

Provide a sense of the size and scope of your site. You can indicate this by presenting a clear explanation on your home page of what your site contains, by choosing clearly stated and comprehensive categories in your navbar, by ordering navigation options (so missing pieces are easily spotted), and by providing a site map or index.

One common technique used by databases to indicate scope is to show how many records are available in any given category.

For instance, in the following example we indicate how many products are available in each product category, which helps not only determine the number of selections for any particular type of product, but also signals what type of product emphasis this store has.

Products: Furniture (12) Appliances (12) Electronics (55) Home Décor (36)
Appliances: Ovens (2) Microwaves (5) – Toasters (3) – Blenders (7)

Scope notes provide information that clarify the range of topics encompassed by a category. Scope notes help provide the scent of information for what lies beneath by elaborating on the title of the link.

Scope notes may be representative subtopics under each link or brief descriptions of each link, as shown in the following example.

Orientation Cues
Pages need to be clearly identified so that users know where they are at all times. People can pop into any page from a search engine, so they need to be able to identify what site they’re on, what page they’re on, and how it relates to their information need. Use clear site titles, page titles, and tag lines.

Page Titles
Use page titles that are as close as possible to the link titles that users followed to get to the page. For instance, if a link says “Appliances,” be careful about naming the linked page “Kitchen Appliances” or, worse yet, “Kitchen Gear.”

While this may provide useful additional information, it is usually better for the link to be consistent with the page title.

Otherwise users may think they clicked the wrong link, especially if they were looking for nonkitchen appliances. On the other hand, some minor differences will rarely confuse people, such as a link called “Toasters” that goes to a page called “Our Toasters.”

Pages should be labeled both in the <title> tag in HTML and with a large, obvious title in the body of the page. While the <title> tag may seem sufficient, most users never seem to notice the title in the title bar of the window.

The title you provide in the <title> tag should be meaningful without any additional context, such as when it gets reported in a search engine. A common convention is to have the site name followed by the page name, as in “XYZ Corporation Toasters.”

Some people like to pad titles with keywords to improve their performance on search engines, but this usually undermines tradability. Of course, the portion of the title that names the page should exactly match the page title you show in the body of the page whenever possible.

Landmarks
Some degree of variety in page design helps the user to have a strong sense of the location within a web site. Consistency remains important, and certain features, like the site name, page title, and navbar, should be kept as regular as possible.

However, some simple changes can help users understand where they are in a site. Using colors or large symbols to identify major sections of a site helps users recognize when they’ve skipped from one section to another.

In addition, significant pages can be made unique by modifying the layout (as a regular variation on the layout themes of the site) or by using a particularly strong page element, such as a large table, image, or typographical element (such as a bulleted list).

Common and clearly identifiable pages can act as landmarks that help users ground themselves within a site, and help users avoid getting lost in a morass of same-old, same-old template pages.

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