February 26, 2008
Removing left-hand navigation
Our consultant recommended removing our site’s left-hand navigation on top and 2nd-level pages (and making it an option only on the 3rd level), and instead integrating the navigation elements into the main content well. Is this a newly accepted best practice?
Your IA consultant may have good data on which he is basing his suggestions. End-user data would be very valuable.
That said, general best practices you want to consider include making navigation and terminology predictable and consistent.
Navigation and terminology should be predictable, meaning that the information is where users would expect to find it and the name or label of the information clearly and accurately describes it.
Be consistent with your navigation. Your current website has some sections where the left side is totally redundant with the top horizontal 2nd-tier navigation, while elsewhere those areas offer different navigation options. You should pick one method and stick with it: Either 2nd-level horizontal navigation drives the next level of navigation on the left that is unique to each page, or eliminate the 2nd-level horizontal and deliver 2nd-tier navigation on the left of each page.
