A practical checklist for navigation design
We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Run through this the next time navigation design comes up.
Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
The checklist
- Seven or fewer top-level items keeps a menu scannable
- Label links by what people want, not by your org chart
- A visible current-page state prevents visitors getting lost
- Someone is named as the owner
- There is a date to review it again
Why this earns attention
Seven or fewer top-level items keeps a menu scannable. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.
How to tell if yours is fine
The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about navigation design before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Seven or fewer top-level items keeps a menu scannable — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.