Great content serves no purpose if site visitors can’t find it. A well-designed site structure and navigation makes it easier for users to find information they need and complete tasks, reduces frustration, and saves your organization time.
Planning Your Site Navigation
Understanding the site tree is the first step to planning your navigation. Your site tree shows how pages relate to each other and which pages will be your main navigation items.
It works through levels; in the example below, the Community landing page is a first-level item. The Parks & Recreation listing page is the second level. Central Park and the other individual park pages are third level. So, in your menu, Community would display first, and the other items below it.
The second step is deciding which navigation style to use. Choose from:
- Hamburger menus are styled as three stacked lines and are minimized by default. When clicked on, they expand to display all first-level pages on your site, and users can select those items to see child pages.
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Drop-down menus display first-level items in a row below the site header, with nested sub-menus for second-level pages displayed when selected.
- Mega menus display first-level items in a row across the top of your site. However, when a site visitor selects a first-level option, every second and third-level page below it is shown.
There are benefits and drawbacks to all three styles, and the choice often comes down to what content you have. The third step in planning your navigation can help you determine which pages are essential for navigation and where you can use in-page navigation instead of your menu.
This third step is taking note of what pages are most popular and which pages have good content but aren’t easily found. You can use site analytics tools to help you do this, but it may also help to talk to customer service teams or departments in your organization to understand what questions people most often ask and which services they struggle with.
Website Navigation Glossary
With some of your planning complete, you can start figuring out which features you want to use to implement your navigation.
Here are all the features in the CMS platform you can use to build your navigation, both from your homepage and in-page.
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Homepage layout components, including top tasks, tabs, and featured content, will help you build a homepage with relevant content.
- The main navigation menu, if structured well, will help site visitors find and browse for content.
- Site search allows users to use a keyword search to find what they need. You can also set up Best Bets for specific keywords to guarantee pages show in search results.
- Featured links are groups of styled links inserted into WYSIWYG Editors and are often used on departments pages to link to child pages.
- Featured sections group pages together and allow you to add a secondary header, logo, and menu for specific sections in the site tree.
- Landing pages act as a main parent page for site sections and contain a content list that links to the direct child pages below them. There are multiple templates you can use to provide the look you want.
- General pages that use a 2-column template have section navigation, which is a left-hand navigation menu to help provide context of where the page sits in your site tree.
- The OC Module Interface content type has a wide range of templates that contain content lists for different content types. Their purpose is to display pages of a specific type that users can select to view the complete page.
- Redirects are pages that don’t have a live version but act as a navigational link in menus to direct users to a specific page. They are helpful if you need a direct link to a page in a different site section or to an external website.
- Utility bars sit above the site header and contain links to essential content. For example, you can add links for contact pages, emergency contacts, a direct telephone link, service or payment portals, an A-Z directory, social media accounts, or subsites.
- Content lists can be built and inserted directly into a WYSIWYG Editor and are used to create links to pages filtered by content types or content labels.
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Related content is similar to a content list, but set up by content type, so you add relevant lists based on the current page the user is on. Related content is automated based on the content type and label settings you choose, and you can choose if it is on by default. Once you have configured the related content settings for a content type, you do not have to manually add a content list.
- The Hide from search and navigation settings are in the Settings tab of each page and allow you to hide the page from search, navigation, or both. You can:
- Hide this page from search: The page will be hidden from site search, content lists, maps, calendars, and module interface listings.
- Hide this page from navigation menus: The page will be hidden from the main site navigation, landing pages, section navigation on general pages, and Featured sections.