Introduction


As more and more students go online and spend more time on the Internet (Pastore, 2001) [summary], web site navigation has become more important in helping students find information for their studies. This paper details navigational design techniques that help web site designers make their navigation more user-friendly, especially for educational users, such as university students and researchers.


The Purposes of Navigation


Krug (2000, p.59) [summary] outlines these as firstly, telling users how to find information, for example by offering menus and search functions, and secondly, helping users to understand their location in the site by using page titles, breadcrumbs, colour coding etc. Thirdly, navigation gives users an overview of the site's content, for example through site maps and the text of the menus. Finally, navigation shows users how to use the site if the site requires some kind of process, such as registration or login, for example as in WebCT.


Standard Navigational Components


These are usually available as links on the home page. The logo of the organisation identifies the site and is usually visible on most pages. The logo can help to assert the authoritativeness of this source of information, which is especially important to students as the Internet contains many pages that are not quality controlled by independent editors (Schroeder 2001) [summary]. Outside the home page the logo is often a clickable link to home. Although many users are now familiar with this convention, it may help new users if the logo looks clickable, for example if it is on a button, or if an explanation pops up when the mouse is placed over it. Users expect the logo to be positioned in the top left corner of the page (Bernard, 2001a) [summary].


Home pages should also give a site description or 'tag line', informing the user of what they can do...