Desk research of the impact of the number of items within a single navigation element

[CharlotteDowns]

What

Research the impact of number of items in a 'Navigation' component

Why

To understand what we may need to include in guidance for 'Navigation'

Potential further reading

• How Many Items in a Navigation Menu?
• Top 3 IA Questions about Navigation Menus
• Top Navigation vs Side Navigation for Your Interface — What to Choose?

[CharlotteDowns]

Notes from How Many Items in a Navigation Menu?

Considerations for the number of Nav items:

1. Content breadth - how much 'stuff' is on the website.
2. Meaningful labels - how the content is described and how succinct they are.
3. Browsing vs. seeking - looking for something specific (fewer categories, deeper structure), having a browse.
4. Nav item prioritisation - popular items at the beginning or the end (where they are easier to spot).

Opt for more items if the labels you use for less items are not descriptive, for example, 'products, services, about us'.

Organise content into logical buckets.

[CharlotteDowns]

Notes from Top 3 IA Questions about Navigation Menus

When deciding to list categories in alphabetical order or not, there are 3 key factors to consider:

1. Is there another organising principle that would be more meaningful?
2. Will visitors already know the exact category names?
3. How many categories are there?

Other ways to organise content than alphabetical organisation. Frequency of use can help the largest number of people quickly access the information they are most likely to be seeking.

Hover menus are pretty much a no no.

[CharlotteDowns]

From analysising the data in our examples, the average number of links in a main navigation is 4 links