NextStage's CRO talks about how to find the ideal navigation for your website in your web logs.

A few columns back we talked about placing landmarks on webpages to help visitors recognize where they are on the site and how they got there. We're going to devote this column and the next few to ways of improving visitor experience via navigational aides. The concept we're going to be working with is…

Visitor Designed Navigation

People who've attended my seminars know about Visitor Defined Navigation. It makes use of website logs to determine the most interesting pages to visitors over time and makes those pages readily available. To date, clients using this technique have found it a valuable tool in keeping visitors on their sites longer and establishing a communication channel that would be denied to them otherwise.

Like so much we've covered recently, Visitor Designed Navigation goes into the concept of Tourists and Locals, and that websites don't make their money from tourists. Some money, yes, but not "rent" money. What you want are the locals, the people who come back time and again. These are the people who know your website better than you do. They don't need your help or suggestions navigating it; you need theirs. In terms of Tourists and Locals, you don't ask somebody studying a tourguide book where the best restaurants are and how to get there; you ask someone who lives in the town.

All too often, websites are designed by people too familiar with the product or service or company to be used by people with no familiarity with the company and some to no familiarity with the product or service. There is an inherent flaw in this. In the real (as opposed to "virtual") world, the best maps are made by tourists, not locals. Likewise, the best mapmakers are those in the process of discovering and learning their way around a country. These are the folks who are anxious to share their discoveries, their learnings, their pitfalls, their joys and sorrows with you.

Discovering the map

As mentioned above, the map is already created for you and can be found by investigating your server logs. What you're looking for are

• The most often requested pages...
• In the order of average time on page

Most web analytics packages provide the sorts of reports required.

Let's use a simple example; a website consisting of a homepage, A, 5 main pages -- B, C, D, E and F - with each page B through F having three sub pages, 1, 2 and 3. Taxonomically your site looks like this:

Let's say you discover via your logs that the most popular pages on your site as a function of time on page and requests are, first to last, A, D1, E2, B2, F3, and C.

The information on those pages and in the order they're given is what's most important on your site as determined by your visitors -- by the tourists who are in the process of becoming locals -- so let them design your site's navigation for you. These are the most interesting pages to visitors on your site.

Regardless of the order in which pages are actually called up, these are the pages which are the most interesting to people coming to your site to learn about you.

The navigation will not be obvious to you, and it definitely will be obvious to people wanting to learn about your company, products or services. You have discovered the preferred map being used by people putting in the time to become knowledgeable about you. Don't put what you think is important up first, put what they think is important up first.

Now that you know what's important to people learning about your services or products, all you have to do is make it easy for others not willing to put in the time to find the time. The method described here works best for Tourist-friendly sites. In future columns, I'll cover some techniques which work for Tourist, Tourist and Local, and Local-friendly sites.

Fair warning: what comes next requires a bit of development time and is especially beneficial for larger sites.

Making the map work

You've discovered the map in your log files. Next, and as much in keeping with your website's aesthetic as is agreeable to you, create something that clearly indicates that there is something that comes "Next."

I often suggest a menu item labeled "Next."

You'll need to determine whether this suggestion will work as a menu item, a link item, a mouseover graphic, whatever, on your site. In the case of a menu, the "Next" menu item should be either first on a vertical menu or left most on a horizontal menu.

Assign a variable array or list to this "Next" item. This variable list is populated with the page names that came out of your web log investigations, and in the order described in the exercise above. This variable list offers as a menu option or clickable item the next most popular page based on the visitor's currently browsed page. Each of the most popular pages is removed from the list as visitors navigate them until the list is depleted. The last offering is a "call to action" page.

What comes next?

Let's consider this: tourists come to your site and don't know where to go. What they do see is a menu item or graphic entitled "Next." Imagine yourself on a site with which you're unfamiliar, on which you are investigating the company itself or their products or services. You see something entitled "Next."

What would you do?

In many cases, visitors dancing on the edge of interest or browsing elsewhere will go with "Next," which means they've stayed on your site one more page before going elsewhere. And on that page they again see "Next." If this page pleased them the last time, then they'll click on "Next" again. With each click on "Next" they've stayed on your site that much longer, and that's the name of the game.

Now the rub can be that the way people are navigating your site isn't the way you intended or want them to navigate it, and sometimes the continuity between these pages is lacking.

This isn't a problem when you remember that people are easier to steer when they're already moving than when they're standing still. Once you know where people are going, you can put your message in front of them and steer them to where you want them to be. But until you're willing to let them go where they want you'll never be able to steer them at all.

And that's much of what Visitor Designed Navigation is all about -- learning from your visitors what's important and giving it to them. Answer their questions (via navigational aides) and they're more likely to answer yours when it comes time to ask them (a "call to action" page).

The next three columns will explore other ways to use Visitor Designed Navigation to increase website acceptance and activity.

Joseph Carrabis has been everything from butcher to truck driver to Senior Knowledge Architect to Chief Research Scientist. His 22 books and 225 articles have ranged among cultural anthropology, mathematics, information mechanics, language acquisition, neurolinguistics, psychodynamics and psychosocial modeling - and other eclectic topics. His knowledge and data designs have been used by Caltech, Citibank, DOD, IBM, NASA, Owens-Corning and Smith-Barney among others. Carrabis is CRO and Founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global, and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Development Network. He is also the inventor and developer of Evolution Technology. You can download sections of Carrabis' next book, "Reading Virtual Minds," at www.hungrypeasant.com.