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Navigation For Mega-Sites

For several websites, navigation is not decidedly challenging. A vital navigation bar, cradled by sub navigation, usually suffices.Generally, sub navigation parades the parent, siblings and children of the in-use page. A determined primary navigation bar demonstrates top-level pages, granting users to progress amidst sections. Nevertheless, there is one class of website for which this traditional form of navigation backslides, Which we refer to as a “mega-site”.

What does mega-site mean ?

A mega-site is generally possessed by a large organization that surrounds an ample range of services or products.

Organizations with mega-sites is composed of institutions such as the BBC, companies with assorted portfolios such as Microsoft, government bodies, top level education institutions and Charities that tend to run many campaigns.

Indicated websites

  • are exceptionally stupendous,
  • extend to numerous levels
  • comprised of many micro-websites and subsections,
  • entertain to many audiences,
  • contain diverse entry points.

Websites of this size and intricacy convey some exclusive navigational challenges.

The deeper the website, the more that conventional navigation battles. Navigation can delightfully harbor three levels; beyond that, one of two things happens. The navigation extends to the point where more screen real estate is devoted to navigation than to content, or higher pages in the information architecture no longer blow in the navigation.

Navigational solutions

1)      Burn the navigation entirely

It burns the idea of dictating a navigational structure over users, instead granting them to find their own path through the website. This is accomplished by fashioning each Web page a standalone document and tagging it with  suitable meta data. Users can then find pages through a blend of search and navigating by tags.

2)      Rip the websites into smaller micro sites

One more way is to fragment the mega-site into a numerous bits of controllable micro sites. If you consider BBC as an example, Instead of treating its Web presence as a lone entity, the BBC has fragmented it down into sub sites, such as news, sports, TV, radio and so on. Each website having its own navigation, and thus avoiding the problems affiliated  with mega-sites.

3)      Bread Crumb steered approach

It does away with committed areas for navigation, and alternatively uses the page’s content to bond to its children. It then uses breadcrumbs to help the user identify their present location and to progress  back up the tree when needed.

Shihab