Sometimes navigating a blog can feel like wandering through a maze.

For example, let's pretend we're going to visit a typically organized blog about trees—to see if we can learn something new about Dutch elm disease. We go to the site and see that there is a category for elms with 32 entries. When we click on the elm category we are taken to a page with the 5 most recent posts. These cover topics such as Hairy Fruited Glaucescent Elm, the use of elm wood in coffin-making, Winged Elm and so forth, but not Dutch elm disease. So we go to the bottom of the page, click the "previous posts link" and go to a page with 5 more entries. We then repeat the process until we find the article we seek—or we give up and use the search box (if there is one).

As you can imagine all of this scrolling and clicking can make it rather hard to find things. But it doesn't have to be this way. By making a few adjustments to our template themes, we can alter categories to list headlines instead of full posts, we can create tag pages to let people browse specific topics—as they might peruse the index of a book, and so forth. Below are a few tips on things you can do to make your blog more browsable.

Blogging Platforms Vary

Different blog platforms offer different levels of flexibility when it comes to customizing your site. Most of these tips will require some experience with HTML, CSS and PHP. If you are using a hosted blogging service such as WordPress.com, Blogger or TypePad you won't be able to edit as much, but you may be able to find other themes that offer some of these features.

My blog uses a self-hosted installation of WordPress.org. In it's prior incarnation at http://blog.case.edu/webdev, it ran on Movable Type 3.121 so those are the platforms I'll reference here. (If you are using Movable Type 4, you may need to check the MT documentation. Learning Movable Type is also an excellent resource.)

Alphabetical Index

I added an alphabetical index to my blog several years back because I wanted an easy way to see a list of all my entries on one page. My archives page at that time broke entries out by month so they weren't all listed together, but I also felt that it would be easier to browse things in alpha order.

As it turns out, I visit this page almost every day. If I'm on LinkedIn or Twitter and want to share a link to a specific post—as part of my response to someone—I go to the alpha index to find the link.

Movable Type

Adding an alpha index on MT is pretty easy. When you create the new page for your index, just add the following code:

<MTEntries lastn="300" offset="0" sort_by="title" sort_order="ascend">
<ul>
<li><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink archive_type="Individual"$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a> <span class="smalldate"> <$MTEntryDate format="%m/%d/%Y"$> - <MTEntryAuthorNickname></span></li>
</ul>
</MTEntries>

If you look at the code you'll see the options are fairly intuitive.This produces a list of entry titles with dates and authors. (In the early days I had a co-author so I felt it would be useful to identify the posts by author). I set lastn to 300 because the default setting would limit it to a smaller number of headlines. Thus I just chose a number greater than the number of articles I had at the time. Periodically I would increase this number to allow for more posts.

WordPress

WordPress is wonderful in many ways, but when I started learning WP, after years of using MT, I discovered that it can be a very different beast. I couldn't find some easy little snippet of code to pop into my template. After a bit of time spent glaring at the WordPress loop and doing Google searches I ended up using the AZIndex plugin by English Mike. This plug-in offers a variety of options such as making an index for specific categories, making an index that excludes categories, indexing pages instead of posts, etc.

Category Lists

If this were a food blog, I might assign an article on cooking rib roast to categories such as "meat" and "roasting," a sub-category of "beef" and a tag of "rib roast".

Category pages and lists are only useful if you assign your posts to the appropriate categories. Too many categories can be just as confusing to visitors as too few.

I like to think of categories as general sections—like you might see in a grocery store. You might have categories for meat, produce, dairy, etc. For specific topics within a category you might create sub-categories such as pork, vegetables and cheese. Then to be more precise you can use tags such as bacon, peapods and Brie. This seems like the ideal way to organize one's posts. My blog is not set-up the ideal way—I have too many categories and they need to be cleaned up.

Once you've assigned your post to the appropriate categories you can think about how you will present those to visitors. Many blogs will list all the categories in a side menu (on WordPress this is often done using a categories widget). A surprising number of blogs don't list them at all. Since I have too many categories, I list them on a separate categories page so they don't clutter up my sidebar.

Creating a Categories List on Movable Type

On the old blog I added the categories list using the following code. I formatted it as a definition list just in case I ended up using subcategories or descriptions.

<h3>Categories</h3>

<dl>
<MTTopLevelCategories show_empty="1">
<dt><a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a> (<$MTCategoryCount$> entries)</dt>
<dd><$MTCategoryDescription$>

<MTSubCategories>
<MTSubCatIsFirst><dl></MTSubCatIsFirst>
<dt><a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a> (<$MTCategoryCount$> entries)</dt>
<dd>
<$MTCategoryDescription$>
<MTSubCatsRecurse>
</dd>
<MTSubCatIsLast></dl></MTSubCatIsLast>
</MTSubCategories>
</dd>
</MTTopLevelCategories>
</dl>

Creating a Categories List on WordPress

To make the list for WordPress I created a new template file called categorylist.php in which I put the following code:

<?php
/*
Template Name: categorylist
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="midbox">
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<div id="maincontent">

<h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_cats(); ?>
</ul>

</div>
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

I then uploaded the file to my themes directory. Next I went to the WordPress dashboard and created a new page called Categories. I left the entry box blank and selected "categorylist" as the template to use for the page. After that I added the link to the page in my side menu by editing the sidebar.php file.

Category Archive Pages

As I mentioned in the beginning, many blogs include complete posts on their individual categories pages. These can be harder to browse, so I prefer to use lists. For example, if you visit the SEO category archive you'll see a list of blog entries on the topic along with the date they were posted and the number of comments on each. One can also set up such lists to include an excerpt for each entry to give visitors a better sense of the topic.

Creating Category Archive Pages on Movable Type

Category archives are a standard feature in Movable Type. I edited mine to use the following code:

<h3>Entries in "<$MTArchiveTitle$>"</h3>
<p class="photoleft"><img alt="feedicon16w.gif" src="http://blog.case.edu/webdev/2007/05/14/feedicon16w.gif" width="16" height="16" /></p>

<h2><a href="rss20.xml">RSS Feed</a></h2>

<MTEntries>
<$MTEntryTrackbackData$>

<MTDateHeader>
<h2><$MTEntryDate format="%x"$></h2>
</MTDateHeader>

<h5><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a></h5>
<p><$MTEntryExcerpt$></p>

</MTEntries>

In this case I used headers and paragraphs rather than a list format. Technically I should have used an <h6> instead of an <h2> for hierarchical reasons. I think <h2> just happened to be available while <h6> was already designated for something else on the site. If you visit the SEO Category page for this example you will see that the list includes the entry excerpts. I've also included an RSS feed at the top for anyone who might wish to subscribe to the feed for just this category, rather than for the whole blog.

If you have individual category feeds you can also use that content to republish them in other places. For example when I was at Case Western Reserve University, we would use the Alumni category feed from the News Center (which I built as a Movable Type Blog) to publish those headlines on the Alumni Web site. (They are no longer doing that on the new site.)

Creating Category Archive Pages on WordPress

WordPress uses the archives.php file to control category (and other) page archives. If you wanted to modify your category archives but leave the others as they are, you could save a copy of this as category.php and edit that file. Here on this blog I simply edited archives.php to add my RSS feed and to list entry titles rather than full posts. Mostly this is just a matter of removing
<?php the_content(); ?> so that the posts won't be included.

If you visit the SEO Category page for this example you will see that the list only includes the titles, date and number of comments.

If I had instead changed <?php the_content(); ?> to <?php the_excerpt(); ?> then you would see excerpts under the titles.

Since the code is a bit long to post here, I created a page showing the code from archive.php for your reference. WordPress provides a great deal of flexibility with these files. You can learn more in the category templates section of the WP Codex.

Tags

As I mentioned earlier tags are a good way to mark posts as belonging to a very specific topic. For example if I put this post in the blogging category, it may be appropriate to tag it with WordPress, Movable Type, alpha index, categories, browsing and navigation. Then users looking for posts mentioning these topics can find them in my Tag index.

SEO plug-ins such as All-in-one-SEO can also use your tags as keywords.

Tags on Movable Type

Tags were introduced to Movable Type in version 3. On the blog system we had at Case.edu, they were used interchangeably with categories (which is why my blog is still so category heavy). So when my blog was on that system I did not have a separate tags page, though some people were using tag clouds on their blogs. Rather than showing you a piece of code I've not actually used myself, here are some links to tag related resources for Movable Type:

• Tag Cloud on PHP in Movable Type 4
• How to Make a Subject Index Using Tags

Tags on WordPress

If your blog uses a widgetized theme, there is a widget to add a tag cloud to your sidebar. My blog isn't using widgets because I'm customizing my sidebar by hand. And, as with categories, I didn't want to clutter up the menu so I put it on a separate tags page. Naturally this will become more useful after I clean up and reorganize my categories and tags, but it's good to have the page ready.

To make this page I created a new template file called taglist.php in which I included the following code:

<?php
/*
Template Name: taglist
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="midbox">
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<div id="maincontent">

<?php query_posts("cat=26");
$tag_list = wp_tag_cloud('format=array&orderby=name&order=ASC&smallest=1
&largest=1&unit=em&number=0');
if (!empty($tag_list)) {
echo "<h3>Web Development Blog Tags:</h3><ul>";
foreach ($tag_list as $key => $tag) {
echo "<li>$tag</li>";
}
echo "</ul></div><!-- end tags -->";
}

?>

</div>
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Since I wanted an alphabetical list of tags, rather than a cloud I set it to use orderby=name and set smallest and largest to be the same size. In a cloud one would normally make largest use a larger size. Then I formatted it to use an unordered list to present the tags.

Next I added a new page called Tags List in the WP dashboard, just as I did for the categories list, but this time I set it to use the taglist template.

Let's make our blogs more browsable for 2010

Whether building a regular Web site or a static blog, I think it helps to give users easy pathways to your content. The above suggestions are but a few of many ways you can make your blog more browsable. Other features can include breadcrumbs, next/previous links, etc. You can even create special topic pages in which you gather together a group of related posts, such as I've done with my Planning Your Web site Tutorial page.

There are also many methods for implementing such features. You might choose to do the same things using a different bit of code, or a plug-in that suits your needs.

If your blog currently uses the typical format that shows post after post after post, try exploring it from your readers perspective. Wander around and see how it feels to browse. Your content is different than mine, so as you explore you may come up with some fresh ideas that I've not thought about. Or you may have already implemented navigation features that make your blog more browsable.

How else might we improve the blog navigation experience? What problems have you encountered, on other blogs, that might be fixed by a few navigation adjustments? Please share your thoughts and ideas below.

Happy Blogging in the New Year!

Other writer's thoughts on blog navigation

• Add Google-Style Page Navigation to your Category and Search Pages
• Blog Navigation and the Ongoing Challenges that Arise
• Blog Navigation WordPress Plugins: Related, Recent, Most Popular Posts and More
• How to Blog Design Style Guide
• Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

Need more Web tips? Fan the heidicool.com Facebook page. I'm posting 1 tip/link there per day to offer ongoing advice on Web design, marketing and social media—without overwhelming your Facebook stream.

Monday I started redesigning a site that I'd first built in 2003. Tuesday I received today's mission from Problogger's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project: "Write a list post." Somewhere in my brain these thoughts collided, so today I thought I'd share some of the core issues I consider when working on a redesign project.

Why do you want to redesign your Web site?

Hint: The answer is not "because the old site is old and boring and I'm sick of looking at it. I want something new." A lot of site owners use this line of reasoning, but we have to keep in mind that we're designing sites for our visitors, not ourselves. If you're thinking about redesigning a site, take stock of the old one.

Look at your site analytics and read your visitor feedback to gauge what is or isn't working. As Cameron Moll wrote in 2005, Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign, so it is up to you determine which changes will enhance your site and which are change for the mere sake of change.

Web site goals

You've heard me wax forth about goals in my Planning Your Web Site Tutorial, so you already know that you have to set specific goals to develop content and measure results. Presumably you did that when you first built the site. But things change over time. Does your original goal still apply? Or is it time to focus on something else? For the site I'm working on now, the goal remains the same, but the scope has expanded. The site was developed to market one product. Now the company has 9 products in 3 product lines. These lines have related, but slightly different target audiences. So while the site still has a goal to sell widgets, it must now be adapted to appeal to a broader audience.

That site had, and continues to have, a clear objective. Such objectives are easy to determine for small commercial sites. For others it is more difficult. Most of us want our sites to do it all: sell more widgets, increase brand recognition, make coffee, etc. But if we try to tackle too much we'll never develop a clear vision. Instead try to focus on one primary objective. What do you want the site to accomplish this year? Is this the same objective you had originally or have situations changed in such a way that you should now focus on something else?

Let's say you're the chair of the philosophy department at University X. You have an interest in applying philosophical thinking to real-world scenarios and want to add more interdisciplinary classes—covering topics such as cognition and intellectual property. Doing so will require more faculty—and the funding to hire them. To make a case for this you must demonstrate a demand for these courses, a demand that can be shown if there is an increase in the number of students taking philosophy classes or, better yet, selecting philosophy as their major.

You have several weighty goals for the department, but if you establish student recruitment as the primary goal of your Web site, you are one step closer to achieving the rest.

Content: What information must you provide to support your goal?

Given that you already have a site, you may have existing content that will also serve your goal. That said it can be distracting to sort through what exists and what doesn't. Instead come up with a new outline based on the new goal. You can then use that to determine what old content to keep or revise, what content to create anew, and how the content should be organized.

For our philosophy site we can consider our recruitment goal by asking the following types of questions. What do students need to know about philosophy to decide if it is right for them? What are the features of the program? What benefits will it provide? What are the requirements?

Students must be given sufficient information to determine if the subject is right for them or not. Philosophy seems vague and esoteric to many, so the site should define the topic, the skill sets used in studying it and the benefits gained from its study. In our current economy, when many choose a major based on how it will help them find a job, it's also helpful to show the practical value of studying philosophy.

I majored in Philosophy because I found it intriguing. I'm the kind of nerd who liked the story problems in algebra; I see the world as a series of puzzles. The study of philosophy gave me a new approach to solving these puzzles, a framework through which I could approach problem solving from a variety of vantage points. I later discovered that this type of critical thinking applies as much to marketing and Web design as it does to hypothetical questions of ethics and meaning.

Prospective students and their parents may not yet know this. My parents supported my choice as they were already strong supporters of a classic liberal arts education. But they had friends who weren't. Vocal friends who asked things like "What are you going to do with a degree in philosophy, sit on a mountain top dispensing wisdom?

In this day and age it's not enough to show that philosophy builds critical thinking skills that can be applied to all aspects of life. People are more skeptical about spending money on a degree that doesn't seem as practical as one in business or engineering. To counter such obstacles you'll need to show exactly how the philosophical method can be applied to the real world. Examples of logical fallacies used in advertising, or ethical questions regarding file-sharing, help demonstrate how the specific reasoning skills learned in the study of philosophy can be applied in real life.

Whether your goal is to share information or sell more widgets, it's important to think about the audience. What information do they require to make the choice to do what you wish them to do? Get into their heads, consider the goal from their perspective, do market research, then apply what you've learned to developing your content.

Content formats: how can we most effectively convey this information?

These days people are anxious to add video and interactivity to their sites to show that they are keeping up with the latest technologies. But video isn't appropriate for everything. Think about the content first and let that help you determine its format. Will you be including a list of available philosophy classes and course descriptions on the site? How would you present that? Would you show a video of Professor Smith reading the course descriptions? Or would you present the information as text? I'd go with text.

How is a philosophy class different than one in math or history? Would it help students to see a class in action? Perhaps this is the time to videotape Professor Smith. If he's known for leading dynamic class discussions, ask him if he'd let you video tape a few seminars. This allows you to share his expertise and knowledge with the public while also letting prospective students see what a philosophy class is like.

Do you want to include educational resources on ethics or logic that will teach students about the field while also enticing their interest? Perhaps you could create a blog or discussion forum in which you pose questions so that readers can respond.

If you think carefully about the information you wish to share and what site visitors should do with it, you'll soon find yourself choosing content formats that are far more appropriate than some talking head yammering at a camera.

Organization/navigation

Once you've come up with a list of the content, and content formats, you will need to support your specific goal, you can organize it into an outline or site map that will guide you in organizing the content and navigational structure of the site. As before try not to look too much to your old site for guidance at first. Instead look at your outline with fresh eyes. Put yourself in the mind of your target audience, and see which content items form logical content clusters.

Then, when your new outline is complete, compare it to the old site. Is the new structure completely different? Or are there only slight variations? This will help you determine whether your revised site will need a new menu system or just some minor adjustments. Also look at your site analytics. Are there pages on the current site that are important but don't get enough traffic? Are those pages hard to find? Is the content less than compelling? Will your new outline make it easier for visitors to find and view these pages?

Whether our new site will be redesigned entirely, or modified slightly, we can learn a lot from the statistics for our old site. They can show us the pathways visitors use to get to specific pages, the amount of time people spend on pages, and which pages they are likely to use as exits from our site. If certain pathways are often used we can try to maintain them so that we don't break anything that is currently working well.

The pages our visitors spend the most time on are typically the most important. If they're not on your new site outline, you may wish to add them. Are there important pages (to you) on the old site that visitors don't spend time viewing? Do these pages support your new goal? If so consider how you can make these easier to find and improve the content so they provide more value to visitors.

Technology/code

Ideally your old site was built in W3C standards compliant HTML using semantic mark-up. If so it will make it far easier to re-use any of the old content you intend to keep. If not, here is your opportunity to clean things up. Whether you are making significant design changes or minor alterations this project will probably involve edits to every page. Given that, it's a good chance to make some changes.

Did your old site use a table-based layout? Did you use bolded paragraph elements instead of headers? If so, try recoding your site using CSS and semantic mark-up. This will both clean up your code (so you're not stuck trying to make sense of all those old nested tables) and help with search engine optimization (SEO).

Also consider how technology has changed and what new options are available through your hosting provider. For example I used to use SSI (server-side includes) to include repeating elements such as headers, menus and footers. I'm now using PHP which also makes it easier to create unique page titles based on my page headers. If your content will include new features such as videos and interactivity, research the best methods for presenting these. Perhaps a content management system or blogging software would help. For my project I'm using WordPress. This makes it easier for me to group items by category and generate RSS feeds and will allow the client to post event and product announcements.

Your needs will vary, but if you take the time now to determine what the best practices are for the features you'll require, you'll find that the site is easier to rebuild and maintain.

Graphic Design

People assume that a redesign means a change in the visual look and feel of the site. But how much you change depends on your goals. Does the current look support your corporate identity and brand? Does it work with the new goal? Does it support the navigational scheme of the new site plan? Do visitors like it? If so, a dramatic change may not be necessary, it may in fact cause confusion. If this is the case you may want to just tweak things here and there to support the new structure.

On the other hand, if you've changed your logo, the old design doesn't serve the new goals or if your site looks like it was built by someone's 10 year old nephew, then yes, change is in order. Let the new goal and your brand identity lead the way.

I take a fairly minimalist approach to design. I don't want flashy graphics and images to compete with the message. Instead I want them to augment the message. But the header image on the site I'm redesigning focuses on only one product. Now that there are more products I'm changing the header graphics and color scheme to better reflect the theme of the full product line. For example, if my site had originally been about grapes, I might have had pictures of grapes and vineyards on the site. But if the company now sells a variety of fruits, my imagery must reflect that.

There's neither time nor space here to fully discuss design theory, but as you work on your new design concepts, keep your visitors in mind. Your favorite color may be hot pink, but your site is meant for your visitors so choose color schemes and readable typography that make it easy for them.

Marketing

Build your new site with marketing in mind. Properly marked-up code, and the use of keywords in your content (especially headers) will improve SEO, thus making your site more easily found in the future. Avoid technology choices, such as using Flash for your entire site, that don't support SEO, page linking, bookmarking, cross-browser compatibility, etc.

Compare your new site plan to the old. Try to keep the old file structure intact as much as possible. If your site has been around for awhile, then others are already linking to your pages and those pages are ranked in Google and other search engines. You don't want to lose what you've already established, so if you can avoid moving old pages, that will help. If you must move or delete old pages, then use 301 redirects to guide visitors seamlessly to the new pages.

When you launch the new site, consider this an opportunity to re-connect with your visitors. If appropriate, poll your visitors before and after the redesign process to get their input. People hate change but they like to feel included. It's impossible to design a site that will appeal to everyone, but if you have access to user input, it will help you design a site best suited to your audience.

When the site is ready, you might also send an e-mail, announcing the launch to your existing user base. Some people will praise you, some will opt-out, and some will complain. Respond to the complaints in a timely and thoughtful manner. You may have annoyed them with your changes, but you've also started a conversation with someone who cares enough about your site, product or service to voice their opinion. Keep them onboard by responding to their issues.

As with any Web development project, there are far more details to consider, but I hope these have provided you with a good starting point for your next redesign. If you focus on the goals and the needs of your site visitors you'll be well on your way.

Web Design and Development Resources

• 10 Tips to a Successful Web site Redesign
• Daniel Burka on Iterative Design (video)
• The Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs
• Understanding Web Design
• Usability First: Web site design

Edu Blogger Scholarship Update

Thanks to everyone who read Learning for fun and adventure: online education comes in many flavors. Through your support I made it to the finals! If you're interested in higher education and related topics, you may want to peruse the blogs of the other finalists. You'll find some good reads there. (Which means I've got some stiff competition.)

"The site looks great. But could you take out the links? I'm afraid people will follow them before they apply to our program/sign up for our event/read the installation instructions/etc." I don't hear this as often as I once did, but it still comes up often enough that it's worth addressing. So today I'll try to dispel some myths about Web stickiness and outbound links.

Will they stay or will they go?

They will go. You know that, because you will go. Whether I bore you halfway through this article or you go on to read several more entries, at some point you will leave this blog. I could offer you videos of the cutest dancing penguins or a fool-proof Web marketing technique and you would leave. I could even tell you the meaning of life (42). You would still leave.

But that's alright. My goal isn't to keep you here forever—trapped with my musings on Web development. My goal is to share ideas and best practices with you, and learn more from the feedback you provide, so that we can all strive to make the most useful Web sites possible. Your goal may be to recruit students to your program or sell more towels, but either way the same principles apply.

What is a sticky Web site?

According to myth, a sticky Web site is one that compels visitors to stay on the site for a long time. The content and features of the site are so enticing that users will stay there wandering about for hours. This is why many Web marketers fret over the percentage of visitors who bounce out of the site and the amount of time spent on it by those who stay. But time is relative. I think a Web site is sufficiently sticky if the goals of the site owner and its visitors are achieved. If the visitor has a positive experience, follows your call-to-action and comes back to visit in the future, then the site is sufficiently sticky.

For example, if I need to order a copy of Don't Panic, I can skibble over to Amazon.com, place the order and be done in less than a minute. I'm happy and Amazon is happy; after all they know I'll be back.

This blog, while vastly different from Amazon, has similar requirements when it comes to stickiness. Perhaps you'll spend a few minutes reading the one article that answers your question. Perhaps you'll linger over the Planning Your Web site Tutorial. Either way, if I've provided something worth reading, then we've both reached our goal. If I'm lucky you'll also subscribe to the RSS feed and Stumble this page so that you and others come back for future visits.

Where will they go when they leave?

On the one hand, that depends on their plans for the day. If they're feeling peckish and adventurous they may want to run out for lunch at Milliways. But if they have time to keep surfing the Web, where they go is partially up to you.

If you've been writing a blog entry about Web site stickiness and outbound links, perhaps you've piqued their interest enough that they want to learn more. In that case you can provide links at the bottom of the page that will give them more information. If you choose these links carefully, you can:

• keep them thinking about the subject
• lead them to content that adds depth or breadth to what you have already covered
• reinforce the idea that your site is a resource—to which users should return—for quality information and site referrals
• influence the pages they visit, ensuring they see pages you trust—as opposed to pages that may be your competition
• link to sites that may return the favor by linking back to you in the future
• enhance search engine optimization (SEO)

I'm not providing information, I'm trying to sell anti-depressants to paranoid androids, where should I link?

Whether your Web site is meant to sell widgets, promote an event or disseminate knowledge, your outbound link strategy should be to provide helpful information to your visitors. If you're selling pharmaceuticals to robots, you could link to:

• studies showing the efficacy of your product
• reviews of your product by satisfied customers
• social media networks and discussion groups geared towards or run by paranoid androids

By providing such resources you can build goodwill towards your brand and help users make a purchasing decision. The same can be applied for events. If it is a lecture, provide a brief biography of the speaker and include a link to his/her own Web site, links to videos of past presentations and other pages that will demonstrate what a compelling speaker he/she is.

In the end, if you take as much care with your links as you do with your other content, your readers should come back for more.

Learn more about outbound links and stickiness

• Debating the Value of Outbound Links (for SEO)
• Linking out: Often it's just applying common sense
• The Role of Outbound Links
• 10 ways to make your Web site 'sticky'
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Web site Sticky

In Your home page is NOT your index; it's your store front, I discussed some of the goals of homepage design and navigation. Today we'll consider how users navigate within the site. As my friend and fellow developer Wayne Smallman correctly surmised—when commenting and following up on that entry, the pages inside your site are like the aisles or departments within a store. Each page needs to be identified so that users know both where they are and where they can go.

Port of Entry: Not everyone uses the front door.

In a real world store, visitors typically enter through one or two main doors then follow the signs or clues to the department they need. But in the online world, they may enter through the front door, crawl in a side window, shimmy down the chimney or teleport in via Google. Each page on your site is a potential entrance. In some cases, you may get less traffic through the front door than through other pages. For example, last month 58% of those who visited http://www.case.edu/visit/ entered through the main page. The other 42% entered the site through one of 44 other pages. Here on the Web Development Blog, visitors entered through 152 different pages—only 8.6% came in through the main page.

To serve these users we need not replicate the experience of the home page, but we can offer wayfinding tools that will help them and other users browse the site.

Where am I? Wayfinding signage and landmarks.

If you've ever wandered around a department store, mall or national park, you've probably encountered the ubiquitous "You are here" sign. Whether you've walked past the same pond 5 times or just can't find your way out of "men's shoes," the "you are here" sign indicates where you are in relation to other areas. A Web site doesn't need something this obvious, but users do expect to find clues that will let them immediately determine where they are, whether they are in the right place and—if not—guidance to direct them towards their proper destination.

To determine location, users will rely on site "landmarks" and "signs" such as logos, images and headers. On sites here at Case Western Reserve University we include:

This screen shot from the
Provost's site shows you some of
our common wayfinding tools.
View enlarged image.

• The university logo in the upper left corner—to let users know they are on one of a collection of Case sites. (On sites using the newer templates, users may click on this image to return to the Case home page).
• The site title on the right side of the the banner indicates the name of the specific site. (On sites using the newer templates, users may click on this title to return to the home page of the site.)
• Section headers appear at the top of the side navigation menu (on the advanced templates) to let users know which section of the site they are in.
• Descriptive page headers at the top of the main content area let users know which page they are on and what the content will include.
• A detailed footer includes the department or organization name, addresses and other contact information.

How do I get there from here? Navigational tools within the site.

If the user has determined that he/she isn't in the right place, menus and other navigational aids should be readily available to guide the user to a more relevant page within the site or to a different site with related material.

Here at Case our pages include menus and other aids such as:

• Top navigation on the upper right of the page offers links to the Case home page, university directory pages and a university search page so that users may easily seek out other Case sites.
• A primary menu appears on each page to let users navigate between sections (on large sites using the advanced templates) or between all pages (on smaller sites using the basic templates.)
• A secondary menu appears on each page of large sites (using the advanced templates) to provide navigation to all pages within a section.*
• Sites that have sections within sections may also incorporate tertiary menus near the top of the content area of pages within subsections.
• A search box below the left hand menu allows users to search within the site for a particular topic or page.
• The related sites box guides users to other sites (Case or external) that provide related content.

*Blogs, such as this site, will typically use topical categories/tags and date archives rather than the usual sectional navigation.

Wayfinding and navigation conclusions

Navigational and menuing systems vary. If you're the XYZ corporation your site may rely on searchable databases to display your enormous inventory of widgets. If you're a small non-profit with a lot of data you may have a site that is many levels deep and requires breadcrumbs in addition to, or instead of secondary or tertiary menus. The navigational tools you employ will often be determined by your content. As long as it works effectively, it doesn't matter which system you use. If you include some basic wayfinding tools to let users know where they are and how to proceed, you will improve the user experience increase the odds that they'll stay on the site now and/or come back in the future.

Navigation and Wayfinding Resources

• A List Apart: Where Am I? by Derek Powazek
• Common mistakes of site structure (Boagworld)
• Interface Design: Trunk Testing
• Navigation Accessibility 1: Menus and Links (Web Usability)
• Seven Steps To Easier Web Navigation by Constance J. Petersen
• Web Pages That Suck - Horrible Navigation Example (Video by Vincent Flanders) Unbelievable example of how to bewilder your site visitors.