In January we published our annual Monitor Awards, which take a broad look at the state of the industry in several key areas, selecting categories for evaluation based on their importance to investors. This year we added a new category, Navigation, to our monitor awards. Navigation is a key determinant of any site’s overall usability. To reflect this in our Monitor Awards report, the new category recognizes retail firms with well-organized content and an advanced main menu system.

In our review, we found that the top winner in our new navigational category best incorporated the following features:

• Rollover Menu Tabs 
  • Tabs that instantly display underlying content upon rollover
  • Best example showed content three levels deep directly from the main menu

American Century’s Rollover Menu

• Effective Overview Pages 
  • Consistent landing pages that provide detailed descriptions of content
  • Best examples included overview pages for sub-sections as well as main menu tabs

American Century’s Section Overview Page (Retirement)

• Secondary Menus 
  • Consistently shown left menus that accurately lay out content
  • Best example includes expandability, without navigating away from the current page

American Century’s Secondary Menu

Good Navigation is critical to Financial Websites. If a site has outstanding content or tool but nobody can find them, they may as well not exist. The above tips should help you improve your sites Navigation.

Additional Resources

You may also be interested in these resources which discuss Navigation.

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