Matthew Marco’s presentation on web navigation was much more interesting than I had anticipated. I figured the different ways of navigating a website was one of the less important aspects of designing one. However, the navigation of a website can really make or break it. Clicking through several different pages is not an optimal way for someone to explore your website. One example he showed us was a continuous scroll, so the user starts at the homepage and deeper content appears as they scroll downwards. This is a smooth way to keep someone on your page long enough to explore deeper. He also showed us the website of a woman who was a graphic designer that had a very interesting layout for her website. It’s hard to describe as I cannot remember the name of the website, but it was like the homepage stood still but the content from other pages moved to the right or left to fill the page. It was slightly confusing at first but it really stood out.
Since I’m doing my website on snowboarding, I looked at some other sites that had to do with winter sports. http://www.skimag.com/ is a pretty popular website. It isn’t as smooth or sleek as the websites that Dr. Marco showed us, but it does have a continuous scroll that shows you deeper content in the website, as well as links at the top to take you directly where you need to go. https://www.burton.com/ is a popular website for shopping and it’s where I buy some of my gear. What is really annoying about this website is that it has a pop up right when you open the homepage to get you to sign up for their email list, which is a turn off for users who are new to the website and just trying to browse. Their navigation, however, is not bad.