What to ask your agency about navigation design
The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on navigation design, these questions are worth asking early.
Design decisions are the ones clients feel most confident arguing about, which makes it worth separating taste from evidence early. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
Questions worth asking
- Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
- How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
- What happens if it needs changing in a year?
- What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?
What a good answer sounds like
Seven or fewer top-level items keeps a menu scannable. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
A visible current-page state prevents visitors getting lost. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
In practice
Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. Three things worth confirming about navigation design before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Label links by what people want, not by your org chart — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.