Once you have decided on a navigation control which will take the user to a particular location, you need to decide how to design that control - what text or graphics it should consist of.
Objectives
A good navigation control:
- is clear (users can tell it's a link, either by standard visual cues or from location etc.)
- has obvious location (users know where - within the site's organisation - they will get to when they click the link)
- leads to obvious content (users know what content will be at that location within the site's organisation)
- is consistent with other navigation controls - this helps achieve the other objectives
Obviously it isn't possible to achieve all these objectives perfectly with what may be a single-word link within a sidebar! But some progress can be made in each way.
Example: "Next" control
For example, consider a primary control (present on every page) which always leads to the next section. Some alternative text for this might be:
- "Next" (this is obvious in terms of location within the site, but not in terms of the actual content at that location)
- "[Title/description of next section]" (this is obvious in terms of content, but not in terms of location within site; it's also less clear as a link and reduces consistency over plain "Next" since all these links will be different)
- "Next: [title/description]" (this is obvious in both content and location, and retains consistency)
