There’s an excellent post up over at Signal vs. Noise by Roby Fitzhenry concerning user paths in web navigation design. The basic argument is that website designers should think beyond the common, top-down hierarchical structure present in most websites since it may not necessarily match up with users’ desired paths. In this case, a “path” is the series of steps (pages viewed, actions taken, etc.) a user undertakes to meet an end goal, whatever that may be from finding applicable information to making a purchase. Here’s Roby’s own words explaining the concept:

Each customer who comes to the site doesn’t care about the overall structure. They care about getting from A to B. That’s a path. Where are your golf shoes? That’s a path. Does my cell phone support international calling? That’s a path. Collect all the paths you can think of in a pile, pull out the 8 paths that 80% of your visitors come looking for, and that’s your home page.

This is a great way to approach navigation design, and undoubtedly something many designers undertake subconsciously through the use of contextual page links. Anticipating users’ needs and placing content in strategically discoverable locations is key to providing more robust and complete user experiences. Say you’re designing a site for a company that produces lamps that require specific bulbs from a manufacturer. After a user completes the buying process for the lamp it might be beneficial to display links to replacement bulbs following checkout in a non-obtrusive manner. In the future the replacement bulbs would remain present on the page, out of the way in a sidebar perhaps, for that user in anticipation of his needs. The concept also works in reverse. If a user has successfully followed a path and reached an end goal, options in many cases should be removed from the user to avoid confusion. On a product detail page it might not be advantageous to link to other product pages or un-related content below the navigation area since it may complicate the user experience beyond need.

Understanding your audience and core user base is paramount when it comes to making path-based design decisions, which can be accomplished through persona development and refined by way of focussed usability testing. How does your organization approach web navigation design?