Menus and links: The Web’s biggest challenge

Cluttering pages with irrelevant links wastes customers’ time and increases their frustration.

To make menus and links simpler, you have to think like a customer. You also have to reduce the number of links and focus on the task at hand.

If you visit the BBC home page and choose “Sport” you are brought to a page about sports. Just sports. The critical first screen is all about sports. No links to news or weather or business. Just sports. If you click on Football you arrive at a page that’s just about Football. Just football. Not cricket. Not rugby. Not golf. Just football. If you click on “Premier League” you get to a page dedicated to the Premier League.

This is not Web design; it’s Web management. It’s about eliminating all the choices that are not connected with the customer’s current task, which in the above example might be: Find out the latest news about the Premier League.

Some time ago, if you looked at BBC pages you would have found a common navigation going across the top of them: Home, News, Sport, Radio, etc. Not so anymore. The BBC has a clearer, simpler, more focused set of pages. They’re focused on the task at hand, rather than the task that might be.