.Significant Improvements to Our Site Navigation Elements and Layout
I, more than anyone, am thrilled that the navigation elements I deployed in 2004 have finally gotten the redesign they have long deserved. Check out any page on Dogster and Catster to see what’s new.
The top buttons are always present no matter what page you are on–Where before about 60% of viewed pages offered only a subset. Superfluous options are hidden as well. For example, the “Register’ button does not appear if you are signed in.
Dogster Top Buttons (for a logged-in user)
Catster Top Buttons (for a new visitor)
We’ve also cleaned up the top navigation by making Login/Logout features and Site Search forms more visible and useful. Wasted space was tightened atop each page and we got rid of some elements that may have made sense in 2004, but were no longer needed. We did add a button for Video as well–so you could see the cutest pups and kitties in action!
Finally, we swapped out our linear image-based left navigation links for smooth opening and closing accordion-style text-based navigation links. Now you can drill down to almost any site features in just two clicks. Or you can leave your favorite topics open and have everything one click away. I’ve posted some screen shots, but definitely surf over to Dogster and Catster and expand and contract the topics yourself.
| Dogster Left Navigation Links | ||
| [entirely closed]
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[with a couple topics open]
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| Catster Left Navigation Links | ||
| [entirely closed]
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[with a couple topics open]
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Wow! Nice work with the navigation. I especially enjoy the Scriptaculous sliding effect. Good choice of framework. Ajax is definitely a plus for both us users and your team because ti frees up layout constraints, and speeds things up while reducing bandwith.
Dramatic moves!
Did you ask your users ahead of time? How are you testing to see if this is a better navigation system?
I personally like it!
Nice work crew.
-Noah
Thanks for the compliments. Woofs!
Noah, in the end our changes weren’t that drastic, we just improved what needed fixing … so, no, we did not test in advance.
For the most part our strategy is to ‘f*ck-up fast.’ That means we develop quickly, release quickly, listen to the community quickly, and then work quickly to fix, redo, revert or finalize.’
We did find one secondary glitch we hadn’t foreseen before going live and are using our planned post-implementation time to fix it.
Personally, I also release quickly, but use Crazy Egg to analyze new features like this. I use Rails, so rolling back new features like this is easy as switching partials. From looking at the URLs, Dogster might use CakePHP which is similar. For more complex features, I have a database based rollback system, but that’s just my way of doing things. Ted, a while back you may have heard about the big Facebook outrage because of their tracking feature. As the owner of a large social network, do you have any thoughts on that, and as a result, do you take any precautionary measures when releasing large social features just in case? It’s unlikely Dogster would EVER have a problem, although it would be interesting to hear your perspective.