Thoroughly rewritten for today's web environment, this bestselling book offers a fresh look at a fundamental topic of web site development: navigation design. Amid all the changes to the Web in the past decade, and all the hype about Web 2.0 and various "rich" interactive technologies, the basic problems of creating a good web navigation system remain. Designing Web Navigation demonstrates that good navigation is not about technology-it's about the ways people find information, and how you guide them. Ideal for beginning to intermediate web designers, managers, other non-designers, and web development pros looking for another perspective, Designing Web Navigation offers basic design principles, development techniques and practical advice, with real-world examples and essential concepts seamlessly folded in. How does your web site serve your business objectives? How does it meet a user's needs? You'll learn that navigation design touches most other aspects of web site development. This book:

• Provides the foundations of web navigation and offers a framework for navigation design

• Paints a broad picture of web navigation and basic human information behavior

• Demonstrates how navigation reflects brand and affects site credibility

• Helps you understand the problem you're trying to solve before you set out to design

• Thoroughly reviews the mechanisms and different types of navigation

• Explores "information scent" and "information shape"

• Explains "persuasive" architecture and other design concepts

• Covers special contexts, such as navigation design for web applications

• Includes an entire chapter on tagging

While Designing Web Navigation focuses on creating navigation systems for large, information-rich sites serving a business purpose, the principles and techniques in the book also apply to small sites. Well researched and cited, this book serves as an excellent reference on the topic, as well as a superb teaching guide. Each chapter ends with suggested reading and a set of questions that offer exercises for experiencing the concepts in action.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 18 Ratings

Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience - 2008-08-12
Reviewer Rating:
This book provides a great overview of basic navigation concepts (such as "berry picking"), navigation artifacts (menus, tabs, bars, text links etc) and usability research done in this area (often not much, but can't blame the authors for that). There are too many (for my taste) neat but not-so-useful bullet point-type categorizations (e.g. "most navigation types fall into three primary categories: structural, associative, utility") and obvious advise such as "when relaunching or enhancing a web site, it's imperative to first determine the problems of the old one". Fortunately this is counterbalanced by a lot of examples (with screen shots). Most examples are presented from an outside point if view; I'd prefer insider explanations (may be hard to get) when taking e.g. about why Amazon.com changed their navigation scheme. The organization of the book is logical, for the most part (though I do wonder why the well-written sections on "tag clouds" and "faceted browsing" appear in the "Navigation in Special Contexts" chapter)... There is some overlap with two other O'Reilly books: "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" and "Designing Interfaces" book, but having read those two books doesn't mean you won't get anything out of this book.

A must read for web designers - 2009-10-13
Reviewer Rating:
James Kalbach, writing on behalf O'Reilly Media, presents a strategic, consumer-driven approach to web navigation in his book, Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience. The book is very engaging, offering snapshots of up-to-date, colorful, relevant websites pertaining to the specific navigational tools he is explaining. The simple layout and organization of the book make it a must read for any website designer whether the firm be a large corporation, or a quaint start-up business. The book is split into three parts, comprising of the following table of contents:
Part I
1. Introducing Web Navigation
2. Understanding Navigation
3. Mechanisms of Navigation
4. Types of Navigation
5. Labeling Navigation
Part II
6. Evaluation
7. Analysis
8. Architecture
9. Layout
10. Presentation
Part III
11. Navigation and Search
12. Navigation and Social Tagging Systems
13. Navigation and Rich Web Applications

Being a beginner at web design and navigation, I was expecting the book to be full of technical jargon leaving me far from interested and unknowledgeable, but the opposite was true. The first section of the book does a fabulous job at breaking down web navigation, what it is, why it's crucial etc., but I would hardly call it a beginner's read. Kalbach gives intricate descriptions of why poor navigation may turn users off from your website, and in turn your company, and how fluid, well-designed sites can make positive experiences for potential customers. After giving thorough background on the topic, the author does delve deeper into presentation of websites, and other modern web topics such as social tagging systems.
Designing Web Navigation succeeds at explaining tools for commendable web navigation, but does not go into the JavaScript, Ajax and other topics, which require a lot of previous technical knowledge. The color pages and relevant, modern, relatable websites allow readers to truly be put into the place of the customer, and gives them the opportunity to ponder how they would like to maneuver a given site.
Although I would consider this book a necessary addition to any web designer's bookshelf, the first section of the book is the only one that kept my attention. I found the background and basic academic explanations of the book extremely engaging, and as it moved into the latter sections, and consequently more difficult concepts, I began to find myself losing interest.
Overall, from a novice perspective, I would give Designing Web Navigation 5 stars, considering it's reader and consumer friendly take on web design. It is an easy read, extremely clear and well organized, and does not require much involvement or prior knowledge on behalf of the reader.

A must read hands-on usability book - 2009-03-21
Reviewer Rating:
This book IS what is trying to explain. A great web-usability book from the navigation point of view (quite an important one btw!) delivered in very well organized and easy to read (may I say 'navigate'?).
A total 'must read' for anyone who wants to make any GUI application more user-friendly, easier to understand, hence more productive and pleasant.

Good - 2009-02-07
Reviewer Rating:
This book was very informative. I received the book just in time for my class.

Solid and thorough - 2008-11-24
Reviewer Rating:
This is a helpful resource for new and experienced designers, though it is not groundbreaking. It's more of a compendium of approaches. I believe the editing was not very thorough, as I found several typos.

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