Site structures are defined by the relationships between site pages and sections (Baehr, 2007). Users often have experience with other site structures and often rely on these schemas to help them navigate new websites unless contextual cues are evident to show navigational differences. These contextual cues can be denoted implicitly or explicitly to the user.
What are some different methods of implicitly or explicitly communicating site structure to users of a Web site? How do these translate to actual site content or functional tools?
Implicitly
Site structure can be communicated to the user implicitly through the use of nested or breadcrumb links, hyperlinked headers, subheads, graphic-text pairs, descriptors, alt text descriptors, redundant hyperlinks, hypertextual chunks, labeling themes and search utilities.
Explicitly
Site structure can be communicated to the user explicitly through the use of sitemaps (textual and graphical), indices/navigational frames, toolbar menus and submenus, textual descriptions, help pages, FAQs and glossaries.
Whichever method is used, it is important that the site structure be accessible to all users.
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