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Home > Guidelines > 6. Make meaningful menus!. > 6e. When users arrive at the target, make it obvious. |
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6e. When users arrive at the target, make it obvious.
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Diagram
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BackgroundOne potentially helpful rule is to use the exact words in the high-level menu as the titles for the next lower-level menu. It is reassuring to users to see an item such as Business and Financial Services and, after it has been selected, a screen that is titled Business and Financial Services. It might be unsettling to get a screen titled Managing Your Money, even though the intent is similar. Imagine looking in the table of contents of a book and seeing a chapter title such as "The American Revolution," but when you turn to the indicated page, finding, "Our Early History"—you might worry about whether you had made a mistake, and your confidence might be undermined. Using menu items as titles may encourage the menu author to choose items more carefully so that they are descriptive in two contexts. —Shneiderman (1992) Use descriptive titles. Put a descriptive TITLE tag in your HTML code. When users add a bookmark for your page, the title is used as the title of the user’s browser window and as the bookmark. Be sure to use a title that tells where the bookmark leads to on every page of your site. —Apple (1999) All documents need clear
titles to capture the reader’s
attention, but for several
reasons peculiar to the Web this
basic editorial element is
especially crucial. The document
title is often the first thing
browsers of World Wide Web
documents see as the page comes
up. In pages with lots of
graphics, the title may be the
only thing the users see for
several seconds as the graphics
download onto the page.
Additionally, the page title will
become the text of a browser
"bookmark" if the user chooses to
add your page to their list of
URLs. A misleading or ambiguous
title, or a title that contains
more technical gibberish than
English will not help the user
remember why they bookmarked your
page. —Lynch and Horton(1999) Use highly visible page headers to provide location feedback. —Microsoft (2000) Users do not understand where they are in a website’s information architecture. —Nielsen (2000a) Do not assume users can remember their entire browsing session. Provide breadcrumbs and other location tools. —Nielsen (2000b)
See bibliography:
Apple (1999),
Krug (2000),
Lynch and
Horton (1999), Microsoft
(2000),
Nielsen
(2000a, 2000b),
Shneiderman
(1992). |
Other ways to make your menus meaningful: 6a. Think of a heading as an object you reuse many times. 6b. Write each menu so it offers a meaningful structure. 6c. Offer multiple routes to the same information. 6d. Write and display several levels at once. 6f. Confirm the location by showing its position in the hierarchy. Resources on menus Heuristic Online Text (H. O. T.) Evaluation of Menus
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Examples
Before Menu item: Customer
Service Page title: FAQ After Menu item: FAQ
Page title: FAQ Before Menu item: How
Branding Adds Value Title: Branding and
Value Major Heading: What
Good is a Brand—to the
customer? First sentence: Your
brand adds value—for the
customer. After Menu item: How
Branding Adds Value Title: How Branding
Adds Value Major Heading: How
Branding Adds Value—for
the Customer First sentence: Your
brand adds value—for the
customer. Before Menu item: Make
Customers Bow Down to
Your Logo as a Cult
Object Title: Your Logo as a
Cult Object Caption: McDonald’s
has instant recognition
in Peking. After Menu item: Your
Logo as a Cult Object Title: Your Logo as a
Cult Object Caption: Crowds
worship at the icon of
the cult of the golden
arches, Peking. |
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Don't make me take an ax to your menu!
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