“What do you think about audience-based navigation?” It’s a question that I am asked when teaching at our Usability Week conferences, and it tends to come up at least once per conference. It’s a reasonable question, and I understand why people wonder about it. The intention is to help users focus on what is relevant and important to them, while hiding content that doesn’t apply to what they need. Unfortunately, my short answer is that organizing site navigation based on audience type is usually problematic.
As a short definition, audience-based navigation is when the site offers different features to different segments of the target audience and allows visitors to see the features for their segment by clicking on the name of their group. Labels for all the targeted segments are usually provided in the global navigation and sometimes also prominently shown on the homepage. The theory is that each user will know what segment he or she belongs to and will only need the features targeted at this segment. Under these assumptions, the hope is that users will save time from not being exposed to those features that are targeted at all the other audience segments.
5 Problems with Audience-Based Navigation
It seems like organizing information by audience type would be easier for both users and content creators. Companies are inclined to choose this method, partly because they are already armed with information about their target audiences and about their site’s users. Designers hope to help users navigate more efficiently by anticipating each group’s needs and sending people down their respective paths. They also see an advantage to tailoring the tone of the writing and images to each audience.
In spite of these apparent advantages, usability issues with role-based navigation are incredibly common. Below are the top five issues that we see in our research.
- Users don’t know which group to choose. Sometimes users identify with more than one audience group. Other times, they don’t identify with any of the options. In some cases, people don’t understand the labels, because the audience categories are based on the organization’s internal jargon. The reality is that people don’t always fall neatly into a single category, nor are they able to quickly self-identify.
Key Bank has audience-based navigation, but the difference between Private, Business, and Corporate is not clear. Where should the owner of a privately owned small business (that happens to be also a corporation) look for services? - Users question whether the category will have information about that group or for that group. Imagine a university website with a link in the main navigation called “Faculty.” Would you expect to see information about the professors that teach at the university, or would you expect specialized information for faculty members? Based on the label alone, you can’t tell, and neither can users. (As a side note, during usability testing, you can learn a lot by asking participants what they expect from audience categories, before they click).
- Forcing people to self-identify creates an additional step and takes people out of their task mindset. Web users are task oriented; they aren’t thinking about who they are. In audience-based navigation, people must ask themselves who the site thinks they are and what type of content that type of person wants. All these questions increase users’ cognitive effort, and people haven’t even made it past the navigation yet.
- Users feel anxious that the information they see might be incomplete or incorrect. When users feel stuck in one group, they wonder what other groups get that they don’t. Particularly in e-commerce or B2B contexts, users want to know if other audience groups have access to better options or prices.
- Websites with audience-based navigation often have overlapping content, which creates a greater workload for users (and content maintainers). Often, topics relate to more than one audience group. So designers end up either creating two pages, one for each audience (a technique that replicates content), or they use the same page with multiple links to it from different sections. Most of the time, this results in users questioning if the information is different in different areas of the site, and people end up pogo-sticking between sections, testing links to see if there is new information.
Ways to Mitigate the Risks of Audience-Based Navigation
Despite the potential pitfalls, there are ways to make audience-based navigation work. Below are a few tips to avoid the most common issues.
- Make audience categories mutually exclusive and jargon free. Audience groups should be distinct and descriptive, so that users can quickly identify themselves. Category names should use plain-language terms that people can easily relate to.
- Indicate if the category contains information for that group. Users are much more successful with audience navigation that includes the additional word(s) “for” or “Information for”.
Global navigation on the Mayo Clinic website is mostly topic based, with the exception of the For Medical Professionals category. The simple addition of the preposition “for” clarifies the purpose and the contents of that category. - Only use audience-based navigation when the content truly justifies it. Role-based navigation works best when the content is unique to that audience group. There should be enough information specifically for that group to justify its own section. In our 2015 Intranet Design Annual, many of the winners successfully incorporated role-based personalization into their intranets. For example, one company created special sections that only appeared for managers or for users on certain teams.
Southern New Hampshire University has a section dedicated to military students that contains information directly relevant to military students and families. This section effectively avoids overlapping content by not repeating general information about the school or the admissions process. - Add additional context by showing subcategories early on. Surfacing deeper links (for example, with a mega menu) introduces users to the scope of a section and affords a shortcut to the content. This way, users can scan the options and better understand each category and its contents.
The second tier categories on the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada website are organized by audience. The mega menu design allows users to see the scope of each audience section and links directly to those topics. - Design navigation that allows users to easily switch between audiences. As with any navigation system, users should be able to understand where they are in the site, and where else they can go. Avoid portals that lock users into an audience section with no obvious way to move between sections.
- Prioritize topics and tasks over audience categories. Remember that web users are task-oriented: they come to a website with a goal in mind. Information organized by topic or by frequent tasks is often easier to navigate because it immediately addresses what people seek. Audience-based navigation can be used as secondary or tertiary navigation when the content merits its own section.
Trusted Choice Insurance relies on topic-based global navigation, but it offers two role-based sections (For Agents and For Carriers) that are given less priority with their placement in the utility navigation.
Conclusion
Audience-based navigation demands additional cognitive effort from users, as they must determine which category to choose, what information to expect in each category, and whether there is other useful information in different audience groups. It forces users to identify themselves instead of presenting topics upfront. But by ensuring that categories are mutually exclusive, and that there is sufficiently unique content to justify a new section, designers can reduce the risks of this type of navigation.
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