Online collaboration challenges even the best website navigation systems. Collaboration software, such as wikis, can result in wonderful collections of cross-referenced, inter-connected, multi-author information.
However the multiple authors are often independent-minded, opinionated people from all walks of life. Authors need to find, change and comment on each other’s work. Visitors access the site for different information, for different purposes, in different ways.
Need any more convincing you need to think carefully about navigation in a collaborative environment?
For online collaboration use familiar navigation conventions and tools
What percentage of their time on the internet will visitors spend on your website? Ten, five, one percent. They do not want to learn a new way of getting around for the snapshot of time they spend on your site. To allow visitors feel at home on your site you need to give them navigational conventions and tools they already know and understand.
Use conventional terms for links such as home, site map, contact us rather than make up new clever terms. Use text rather than images, which may confuse and will increase download times. Lets look at some of the navigation tools that are available and see how they work for online collaboration.
Free text search is essential for online collaboration websites
Free text search is essential on most sites.
- Make it easy to find.
- If you have a large site
- Index it regularly to speed up searching, and
- Consider advanced search options.
Free text search is ideal for online collaborators and visitors who know what they are looking for but not where to find it. You need one within a single click of every page. Preferably it will be 25-30 characters wide and labelled ‘Search’ so everyone knows exactly what it is. Quirky labelling might seem cool to you but be ambiguous to others, detracting from their experience of your site.
Advanced search options are useful if you have a large site and a simple search produces to many results to easily browse through. Advanced search helps visitors refine their searches to improve the relevance of their results.
A large site may also slow down the search engine, allowing visitors to move on before the results are returned. Things can be greatly improved by indexing your site regularly.
Tags ease online collaboration
Good tagging is essential in collaborative software, they ease navigation and often double as keywords to optimise your site for search engine indexing.
Good tagging means:
- Tags are consistently applied
- Tags accurately represent, to collaborators and visitors, the focus of the page
- Tags meet the needs of collaborators and visitors
Tags are often the core of wiki and blog navigation. Tags are attached to articles by their authors and should represent the focus of an article in terms that collaborators and visitors can understand. Good tagging is essential. Different collaboration software allow visitors access to the list of tags used on in different ways.
Tag search
Searching for tags using a free text box can be frustrating. A searcher has to use the exact tag the author used and spell it correctly. For example an author tagged a page describing how to grow cucumbers and zucchinis with the tag cucurbits. This tag is accurate but none of his potential readers had heard of the term. They wondered why the gardening wiki had no articles about cucumbers.
Tag Lists
Some collaboration software overcomes the tag search problem by presenting a list of tags used. When the visitor clicks on a tag they are shown a list of articles with that tag attached. Visitors need access to the full tag list but the list can get very long if there are a lot of articles on the website or the authors are over-enthusiastic taggers!
As a compromise many blogs and wikis present just a shortened version of the tag list on the home page. They can select these tags a number of ways, such as:
- Tags attached to the most pages on the site
- Tags most used by visitors
- Tags attached to the most recently changed pages
Tag Clouds
Tag clouds carry the popular tags list a bit further. In Tag Clouds popular tags are distinguished by a larger font or different colour.
Tag clouds will be really useful when someone develops tag clouds, which allow tiered searching. In tiered tag clouds users will be able to select one tag from a cloud and be presented a list of appropriately tagged articles as currently happens. However beside the list of articles is a further cloud of tags, which have been combined with the original tag on articles on the site. This allows users to further refine their search if needed.
Technorati is halfway there. On Technorati clicking on a tag in a cloud reveals a list of tagged articles but also gives searchers the opportunity to select related tags.
Article indexes and site maps
- Use at least one of these, but
- Make sure each page title gives a clear indication of the page’s contents.
Some users navigate web sites exclusively using the site map and the Google Searchbot will make good use of your xml site map when it explores and ranks your site. Unfortunately the absence of a hierarchy, for example in a wiki, often makes is difficult to draw up and maintain an accurate site map.
Many wikis and blogs prefer, instead, to present index pages with an alphabetical list of articles. This works well as long as you have been careful with naming your articles. A descriptive article name is far better than an esoteric one. For example “An Exciting Day” does not given any real indication of the article’s content.
“The day I fell in love with a chimpanzee” is better.
The list of articles can get long and some collaboration software presents trimmed down lists on the home page. Examples of these automatically generated lists are:
- Recent Changes: recently added or edited pages,
- Most Visited: pages, which are visited most often,
- Hot Pages: pages, which have received the most votes from visitors.
Seedwiki presents its list of most recently changed pages as a page cloud on its home page. “The seedwiki cloud of change: the bigger the page name, the more recent the change.” I like the idea but unfortunately few of the page names give much indication of what the page is about and so it is not very useful.
Drop down menus
- Drop-down menus are most useful on hierarchical sites
- Titles must be meaningful to visitors
- Don’t put empty pages on menus
Drop down menus are often frowned on in the web design community as they can use categories, which, although meaningful to the site’s owner, confuse the reader. They are only useful on sites that maintain a fixed hierarchical structure, which is understood by both the site’s owner and its visitors. They are very difficult to maintain on wikis or blogs.
There is a temptation to put pages that you think are needed on to your drop-down menus. But, have you ever navigated to a page on a drop-down menu to get the message. “This page is empty. Please write it” or something similar. You might put up with it once or twice but then you stop using the drop-down menu. Empty pages are best left off the menu.
Breadcrumbs
- Breadcrumbs orientate visitors on hierarchical sites, and
- Can keep a trail of visited pages on some collaboration software.
Breadcrumbs, the trail of page titles you see across the top of many web pages, are traditionally associated with hierarchical sites. This allows visitors to orientate themselves on the site.
Home > cameras > digital cameras > Sony > Cybershot
The trail of breadcrumbs helps you navigate the sites hierarchy. This is not usually appropriate for wikis or blogs but may be useful for professional collaborative authoring.
Stikipad handles breadcrumbs in a different manner. On stikipad wikis you have the option of leaving a trail of visited pages that is not related to hierarchy. Allowing visitors to step straight back to a page they have previously visited.
Dated archives
Blogs and online journals often have dated archives. This is so frustrating unless you are a historian. In most situations the date is irrelevant to the reader and gives no indication of what is behind it. Try very hard to find an alternative.
Summary: navigation for online collaboration
Good navigation is essential for online collaboration:
- develop it with your collaborators and visitors in mind
- keep it conventional, consistent and simple
- use meaningful page titles
- think of the end-user when tagging
So make sure your collaborators and visitors don’t get lost
Tagged with: Design
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