A Lesser Role for News Navigation

By: Steve Outing It's almost 2005. So why is it that your news Web site's navigation and search schemes look like they belong in the previous century?

OK, that was a little harsh. But perhaps it got your attention. You see, when we look at the state of the art in Web site navigation and search, there's little resemblance to those components on the majority of news sites.

Recently I interviewed Christina Wodtke, an information architect who advises online publishers worldwide on design and usability issues, and I got a good sense of state-of-the-art best practices for Web site navigation and search -- and was disheartened to realize that many of the good ideas from the world of information architecture remain unimplemented (or unknown?) by most online news publishers.

Navigation woes

Let's start with navigation. While not universal, of course, a common navigation scheme is to use the left column of a news site's home page as the holder of a long list of navigation links. WashingtonPost.com, for example, has 65 navigation links; LATimes.com, 70; DenverPost.com, 62; TheTimes.co.uk, 32; TheAge.com.au, 48.

It's the minority of news sites that keep navigation lists succinct. Boston.com provides a good example, with only 11 navigation links running horizontally along the top of the page, just under the flag.

But according to Wodtke, who before leaping into consulting was director of design for search and marketplace at Yahoo!, those long navigation lists aren't effective. Testing shows that when such lists grow to be more than about 10 items, people tune them out -- they become noise and are unlikely to be seen or used by most users.

Wodtke recommends that sites pare down navigation lists to just a few of the most important links; only include those that are critically important. The ideal top number is eight, she says, but don't go above 10. For a news site, this will include the obvious ones: Local News, International, Sports, Business, etc. But the short list also should include links to sections that are important to the particular site. A Detroit news site certainly will want to include Autos; a Las Vegas site probably will include a Gambling link.

Key point: Use self-limited navigation links to point to the 8 to 10 things that your site does best.

OK, so how about all those lost links? How are people supposed to find stuff on a news site with all those handy links missing? There are several parts to that answer.

First, Wodtke supports the idea of fly-out navigation for power users. That is, the user moves his mouse over the word "International," for instance, and sub-menus become visible -- "Europe," "Middle East," etc. Some editors don't like fly-out menus because they fear that most people won't see what's in them. That's absolutely true. But the point is that the only people who need to see them are the power users who care enough to seek out those sub-menus. For everyone else, they'll use other methods to find the same thing.

Next, consider the idea of intermediary pages. That is, when you click on the "International" link, it leads you to another page that includes top international stories, which can be grouped into sub-sections ("Europe," "Middle East," etc.). Navigation on this intermediary page might be limited just to the International sub-categories, along with a Home link.

A criticism of this scheme that I can predict is that adding another page to get to desired content can't be a good thing. But consider that if a 60-link home-page navigation column isn't getting used as much as a site publisher would like, this is a minor quibble. The end result is a better user experience.

On a home page, says Wodtke, the most important navigation elements are in the body of the page. The majority of users will peruse the central headline-and-blurb or headline-only content of a news site's home page in order to decide where to go elsewhere on the site, rather than rely on navigation. (That notion was borne out in the Poynter Institute's recent Eyetrack III study of eye behavior on news websites. I was the project manager on that study.)

Ergo, it's important to include navigation elements within the main body of the home page. For example, a sub-category on the page might include a top "International" story headline-blurb link plus a couple of additional headlines, liking to other important stories. Below that is a link to "More International coverage...". That's going to be more effective than links in a left-column navigation block.

What news sites overlook

An area too often overlooked when it comes to navigation, Wodtke points out, is the article page -- important in these Google-crazed days, of course, because many people visiting a news site come from a search engine, news search engine, or a blog or other article referral.

So give those poor lost souls a way to find other cool stuff elsewhere on your site. Pay attention to smart navigation on article pages and don't just focus on the home page.

And one last navigation tip: Wodtke suggests adding some simple, succinct navigation at the bottom of articles. With nothing at the end of a story -- the norm in the news-website world -- readers are lost, with nothing to do but scroll up or (more likely) hit the Back link on their browser, possibly leaving you for good.

The sad state of search

If navigation on news Web sites could be better, so could search. News sites for the most part are not taking advantage of the promise of search; they've not yet taken full advantage of what Web-search technology can do in 2005.

Try this to see what I mean. Type "bicycle" into the search box of SFGate.com, website of the San Francisco Chronicle. (Or just click on the word bicylce in the previous sentence.) The result is a list of articles containing the word bicycle, reverse ordered by date.

Those results represent a missed opportunity at best serving the user. What if the person typing in "bicycle" was looking to buy a bike? Then it would make sense for the search results to include links to classified ads from the Chronicle offering bicycles for sale. What if the person was looking for bicycle-racing results? It'd be nice, then, if the search results included lists of bicycling news from the Sports section.

Getting a bit closer to better serving the reader is WashingtonPost.com. Let's type "bicycle" into that site's main search box. (Click the word bicycle in preceding sentence.) You still get a list of links to stories including the word bicycle, but notice the tabs at the top of the results page: "Articles," "Photos/Videos" and "Events/Locations." (Search on this site is powered by Google.)

That's not quite the ideal, of course. Smarter would be to have tabs for search results within classifieds that included "bicycle"; and for articles, for the search engine to have recognized that many results were from the Sports section and to have created a Sports tab.

Ah, you say, but if a user wanted to find a bicycle in the classifieds section, he'd have clicked on Classifieds. Well, yes, that's what people are forced to do today. But when sites get around to implementing smarter search, they'll be able to do what would appear obvious: When they want to find a bicycle, they'll type "bicycle" in that most prominent search box that's at the top of the home page.

There's also the issue of that simple, crude list of links. "The concept of 10 blue links as results is very primitive," says Chris Sherman, a Web search analyst and author of the new book Google Power. The Web search-engine companies are starting to lead the way to something better, he says, and news companies should pay attention.

For example, go to the main Yahoo! site and type in "pizza boulder colorado." Above the standard list of blue links results, you'll see that Yahoo! has highlighted several pizza restaurants in Boulder.

Now, from that page, click on the "Local tab above the search field. On the resulting page are not only listings for all the pizza places in Boulder, but a "Refine Results" area that allows you to sort through pizza restaurants by price, atmosphere, and other options.

So, apply the search term "pizza" to a news Web site, and here's what the user ideally would see:

1. List of articles with the word pizza.
2. Recipes for pizza from the Food section.
3. List of pizza restaurants and delivery services, with links to menus and with advertisements from pizza places that have paid for search-term advertising.

Wodtke says that for a news site, because its editors know a lot about a typical user's behavior when using the site, it's easier to predict what they've seeking. When a Google user types in "Iraq," Google doesn't know if the person wants a map of Iraq, the latest headlines from Iraq, or basic information about the country for a school report. But if a news-site user types in "Iraq," odds are high that the person is looking for the latest news from Iraq. In that case the search should turn up, categorized accordingly:

1. The most recent headlines from Iraq, in reverse date order.
2. The newest news photos from Iraq.
3. Iraq news packages and special sections featuring Iraq coverage.
4. Iraq resources.

If this sounds tricky to pull off, then at least start with something easy: When a user of your site types in "weather" for a search, give her the actual weather instead of only a list of 10 articles with the word weather. When a user types in "restaurant," include in the results a categorized list of restaurant reviews.

Who's heading up your search?

Wodtke insists that this emphasis on improving search is critical for news sites, because of the trend for Web users in general to use search more and navigation links less. As search functionality improves and the search engines add smarter features, users become accustomed to using search to find what they want. They're more inclined to use search on your news site, so don't disappoint them.

What if your site's stats show that people are not using search that much? "It probably means your search sucks," Wodkte suggests. She thinks that major news sites should have someone on staff who is in charge of search -- it's that important now. And a site's search chief should be doing plenty of user testing to figure out how to do the best job with site search.

OK, so how are you going to pull this off? Doing the kind of sophisticated search suggested in this article isn't easy. Sherman points out that the basic free Google search is superior to that on most news websites; indeed, many websites use that free service as the search interface for their sites. Getting into a paid relationship with Google (or another search-engine company) is probably the way to go, he suggests, because you'll get perks enabling you to do some of the customization we've discussed here.

Sherman also is a fan of Topix.net, a news aggregator (whose main website is a competitor to Google News) that's doing some innovative work in techniques for surfacing user-relevant news. Talk to companies like Topix about experimenting with your site's news search, he says.

Search 3.0

Finally, if you want to get really fancy, think about personalization when it comes to navigation and search. Track users' behavior -- what they tend to look at on repeat visits to your site -- and adjust your succinct navigation accordingly. If a user frequents the Travel section, add that to the navigation they see, for instance. If a user spends lots of time looking at home-for-sale ads, provide a main navigation link to Real Estate or even highlight a few ads on the home page that user sees.

Or here's something really cool: Automatically adjust the font size of navigation links that get used more than others, so frequently visited parts of a news site by an individual are easier to spot on the navigation.

Be careful with such schemes, however, says Wodtke, because user behavior tends to change over time. The person who's been looking at a lot of real estate ads will purchase a house and then have different preferences. A way to deal with this issue is suggested by Findory.com, a news site that tracks what users read over time, then adjusts story selections on the home page based on past story choice.

Likewise, personalization of search is a worthy goal, "but it's really hard," says Wodtke. But that's something that the Googles of the world will be working on in the next few years -- and eventually that technology will filter down to be available to news websites.

Web publishing: never a dull moment.

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