The AWS Blog

An old Scottish proverb states: “A bad wound may heal, but a bad name will kill.”

I’ve never really understood what that meant, but I’m starting to wonder if these old guys might have been trying to come up with a name for a primary navigation element to describe some complex piece of content on an ancient website.

Much has been written about primary navigation. There have been great discussions about positioning it (top versus left mostly), controversy over different types (tabs, drop-downs, etc), and some people even claiming that we should do away with it all-together.

At some point when you’re constructing the information architecture of a site, you’re going to have to come up with the names for each item in the primary navigation. When it comes to labeling the links on a site’s primary navigation, there is potentially a lot at stake. If a user is forced to guess at what she is going to see when she clicks a link, then we haven’t done our job correctly. In a different light, if the user is able to form a fast conclusion about what she’s going to see when she clicks a link, and then she finds out that she’s wrong, once again, we’ve failed.

If this concept is at all fuzzy to you, go read Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. No one has gotten the point across better than he does, in my opinion.

The naming problem typically becomes more complex the higher up you get in a website, which is why these tips are focused on naming primary navigation elements. Content contained in tertiary pages and beyond tends to be more focused, and can therefore be more easily described in the navigation.

Tip 1)
Brainstorm like crazy. This is a given and it’s probably something that you’ve already done. Go back and do it some more. List the tertiary pages that are included in the section and start rattling off words that describe all of the pieces collectively. Look at your competitors sites. Look at other sites that you like. Grab the thesaurus. Now start narrowing the list. You’ll use the rest of these tips to test each of your prospective names.

Tip 2)
Think about each proposed name outside of the context of the navigation. The name that you pick will also have to be title of the secondary page that it links to (in most cases). Does it make sense as a page title?

Tip 3)
Does the proposed name stand on it’s own, outside of the context of the other primary navigation items? I’ve heard discussions that go something like, “The link next to it is ‘Buy Now’ so it’ll be obvious to the user that if they want to just learn more, they have to click this link!” That’s a stretch, and damnit, you’re making me think!

Tip 4)
Does the name have enough contrast when compared to other items in the primary nav? Jakob Nielson wrote an article recently about fixing a confused information architecture, in which his examples were “Foo Basics” and “Using Foo.” The former was about product features, the latter was technical support information for existing customers. They’re both fairly descriptive names, but when put side-by-side, users can form all kinds of incorrect assumptions about what’s on the other side of the link!

Tip 5)
Is the problem in the name, or in the content? The primary navigation element needs to be able to accurately and completely describe the content contained in the section of the site. If you find it impossible to describe the content in one or two words, the content may be too broad. Breaking up a section of a site is not always an option, but if you run into this problem, it can be considered. The opposite is also true; if you have two links that are too closely related, consider merging the content into one broader section.

Tip 6)
Test! Jakob’s article on the confused IA also contains a great method for testing your choices. Let users interact with each choice and make a decision based on the results (read his whole article for details). If you have an existing website that you’re concerned about, watch for users pogo-sticking (moving to a secondary page, and then immediately back to the homepage) as a potential indicator of a poorly-named navigation item.

Contrary to what the old Scots may think and how some of your brainstorming meetings may feel, this is not a matter of life and death. Make as much of an educated decision as you can, test, move forward with your development, and then watch your web analytics. Also take some comfort in knowing that your users will be helped along by the other navigation aids on your site (breadcrumbs, search, descriptive horizontal linking).