Categories: Articles

When You Design A Website, Design It To Be Navigated

Ever since I heard Tara O’Doherty of Cossette/Fjord discuss usability at the Internet Marketing Conference several years ago, two things happened. One, Tara and I have become friends, bonding over everything from the bleeding edge of marketing to things far too silly for this Blog. Secondly, it awoke me, and the whole team here at Twist Image, to better understand and develop websites not for our clients but for our clients’ customers.
I also began subscribing to and reading GUUUI. In their most recent email blast there is a link to an article called, Navigation Blindness, that is a must-read for anyone who uses their website in a serious fashion (meaning more than brochure-ware).
The email says that “most web development projects put a lot of effort into the design of navigation tools, but fact is that users tend to ignore them. They are fixated on getting what they came for and simply click on links or hit the back button to get there. This behavior suggests navigation should be designed to be a more integral part of website experience.”
This is more than food for thought – it’s a whole meal of reading.
We’re also learning that sometime stating the obvious is not only confusing to web users but literally bottlenecks them. Have you ever put a stranger on your site and watched what, where and why they do things?

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.