http://www.alistapart.com/articles/whereami/
“Where Am I?” by Derek Powazek is an article about the meaning and importance of navigation in a web page. In a website navigation represents more than just links, it is the essentials of a web sites success. It also determines the relationship and understanding of the user. According to Derek Powazek navigation has three parts to help communicate the site to the user. First is “Where am I?” which represents the present. Second is “Where can I go?” representing future and three “Where have I been?” which represents past. If an individual was to visit a site and successfully answer all of these questions on a deeper page in the site, not the homepage and not rely on any visuals that would be a successful site, but in today’s age according to Derek Powazek most sites fail. Navigation is important because it builds trust between that company’s site and the user. How is the content presented and is it easily to navigate through? “NEVER, EVER LINK TO THE PAGE YOURE ON”, (Powazek). Navigation tells a story and if there is a link that does not take them to a new place like they expected that is a bad experience for the user and they could become doubtful and uncertain about the trust of that site. Another key guideline is to “SHOW WHERE YOU ARE”. Just like a GPS the user needs to know where they are on a site so they don’t have a panic attack like they would get lost on a road somewhere. Another guideline is “THINK BEFORE YOU LINK”. Is this link or whatever absolutely vital to this site and what you can do here? Thinking about the global navigation and describing the site, the question a designer should ask himself or herself is the story getting across? How many global elements are there? How many drop down menus? Should tabs be used? In the end, for successful navigation to a site it’s all process of elimination, testing, testing, testing and the visual language is consistent.
http://www.billabonggirls-usa.com/#/home/
Billabong.com has a great navigational structure and site design. The navigation bar is a series of tabs with drop down menus and the Billabong logo at the top left beside them. There is a flash player beneath the tabs for visual interest to the user as well. There are a few images below to click on for blogs and clothes but all the important information is at the top drop down menus.
The navigation to this page is very visual but easily usable. The navigational elements visually stand apart from one another on the page from the rest of the elements to decide what to look at first. The use of a plain white background helps determine between the visuals, and reminds me of how magazine make their layouts. The breadcrumbs in this layout are successful because if you click on blog for instance once you get to that page you have the tab menu still at the top to return to the previous page or another page.
There are not many text links throughout this page besides to read more, post a comment, or see this shirt. On this site there is a navigational tool for searches products and narrowing down your search to certain clothing or even surfboards. The navigation is very intuitive in this site because of how successfully the designers have condensed so much information into a usable and trustworthy site. The fact that there is shopping, blogging, videos, teams, events, store locator, online retailers, and much more all on one site and it is not overwhelming and still visually interesting, to me is a great accomplishment by the design team who created the Billabong site. Honestly I would not change anything about this site I think it is overall very well put together. If I absolutely had to choose something, I would say maybe to condense down the shop options a little for better navigational purposes.
Overall I feel the usability of the Billabong site is engaging, visually interesting, practical, and reasonable.
alexlytle 