Giraffe Forum

No other single factor causes greater customer frustration and dissatisfaction than confusing menus and links.
The root cause of most confusing menus and links is organizational language and thinking. Take, for example, the FAQ. Over the years, I’ve found that most customers don’t even know what an FAQ is. That certainly surprised me because I thought […]

Recently, we did some extensive task testing with a technical audience. 70 percent started the task by clicking on a link, 30 percent used search.
The larger the website, the more important it becomes to have quality search. However, the foundation of all great websites is, and always will be, quality navigation. In fact, there is […]

To create clear menus you need to understand your customers’ top tasks and use the words they would look for as they seek to complete these tasks.
Good web navigation is unsubtle. It is clear, precise, familiar, consistent, boring, unemotional. Good navigation is ugly and functional.
You’ve just designed a new plane. It’s sleek and ergonomic, […]

A link is a signpost, a promise. If a customer clicks on your link they are spending their time. Don’t make them waste it.
There are two types of links: navigation links (also called classification or menu links), and the links that are part of the body text of the page.
Links should embody the action. […]

A good link has no time for small talk or niceties. It acts like a signpost, like a promise. With a good link, what you see is what you get.
If most of today’s web links were married they’d be heading for divorce. Because they never keep their promises. “Darling, I’ll be home at 10.” But […]

Humans are dominated by visuals. But the Web reflects a movement away from this visual dominance.
For millions of years we lived in a world dominated by visuals and images. We saw the lion coming. We didn’t need to be able to name the lion. We didn’t need to be able to write the word “lion.” […]

The more you delete, the more you simplify. The more you simplify, the more you increase the chances of your customers succeeding on your website.
I recently worked with an organization that had managed to delete a substantial quantity of content from its website. It was not an easy process. In fact, it took years of […]

Climate change or global warming? Pandemic flu or bird flu? Learning or training? Should we choose the ‘correct’ words or the words people actually use?
According to Google, every month an average of 300,000 people search for climate change, while 2.2 million search for global warming. Yet the official term on most government and media websites […]

We don’t scan a webpage. Instead, we scan a particular block or section of it.
I was working with a company who, based on research, had discovered a top intranet task. It was interesting that the web team initially had no idea what this task was about, even though there was huge demand for it in […]

Every time you add navigation options you add confusion and complexity. Too much choice is the bane of web navigation.
I just got a new satellite navigation system for my car. Last weekend I was driving from Dublin to Galway.
“Hi, I’m Navvy your friendly new navigation assistant.”
“Hello Navvy”
“Where would you like to go?”
“Galway.”
“Great. Let’s go.”
Sometime later […]