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Mettre en place un portail web n'est pas chose aisée. Il ne s'agît d'un projet dans lequel les aspects technologiques, marketing et design doivent être dosé avec finesse.
Hierarchical navigation path (vertical)
Navigation are typical path that we expect users to follow on the portal.
The main path will orginate from the homepage, but you have to think also on specific path originating from pages found on search engine.
Exemple:
You have a corporate website that describe your products, your company financials (amongst other topics)
One navigation path will start from the homepage. To design this path, you have to think about the kind of people you are interested to have on your portal. Makes groups out of them and try to think of:
- What they would like to find on the homepage
- Where they will go from the homepage
Now, you can draw a table like that
| Group name | Want on homepage | Need on dedicated page |
| Customers |
News Contact Adresse Product list Next trade show |
Product and prices New releases Next training Local contact Contact form ... |
| Investors |
News Stock quote Contact Adresse |
Financial reports Trade show .... |
| Developper |
Product list Release schdule |
Next training Forum Developpers blogs White papers ... |
You are now able to:
- Make a list of items that got elected for the homepage
- Define the area of the homepage that will lead to the dedicated page
- Make a list of items that got elected for each dedicated page
Now, you have to decide if:
- You apply the same layout to the whole portal
- You apply dedicated layout, and style, to dedicated pages
As different items will be found on different dedicated pages, you will probably opt for the second solution. In this case we will rename the dedicated page as 'Sections'.
You now have a homepage with:
- The common items needed by all kind of users
- A teaser to take selected group of users to their dedicated sections
For each section, think of people what reach it straight (not coming from the homepage but from a search engine) and add some of the common items from the homepage to the section specific items in order to:
- Fullfil all the needs of your visitors in one page
- Allow a route for people wrongly directed to this page. (I'm a customer looking for a product but the search engine directed me to the developpers section. I should have a path right to my dedicated section)
You are now ready to take a piece of paper, list the items and place them on a mock up screen. Your layout for the homepage and the dedicated sections are ready.
A guide on Web Usability
