Review Website Navigation with Five Reader Tasks
Navigation is easy to judge as a visual object and harder to judge as a route through information.
Navigation is easy to judge as a visual object and harder to judge as a route through information. A menu can look balanced while using labels that make sense only to the organisation that wrote them. Testing a few concrete reader tasks reveals problems that a layout review may miss.
Begin with a small set of tasks that matter to the site. For an editorial publication, these might include finding an article by subject, locating the latest posts, understanding the publisher, contacting the editorial desk and returning to a previously read guide.
Write tasks without giving away the label
Instead of asking someone to click Guides, ask where they would look for a step-by-step explanation of a particular subject. The first version tests whether a button can be found; the second explores whether its meaning is clear.
Choose participants and tasks that reflect the intended audience as closely as practical. A handful of observations can identify questions, but it should not be presented as a statistically representative study. Record the limits alongside the findings.
Watch the first choice and the recovery
Notice which route a person tries first, what they expect to find and what they do when the result is different. A mistaken first click is useful evidence about the relationship between a label and its destination.
Do not immediately explain the menu during the exercise. Ask neutral questions afterwards and separate what you observed from your interpretation. A person pausing may be reading carefully, not necessarily confused.
Check more than the desktop menu
Review the mobile menu, keyboard access, visible focus and the way long category names wrap. Confirm that links have meaningful names and that the page's heading structure supports reading. Accessibility should be considered throughout the review rather than treated as a finishing decoration.
Also inspect article-level navigation. Readers may arrive directly from a shared link and never see the homepage. Clear categories, related reading and a recognisable route back to the publication help them understand where they are.
Turn findings into a small revision
Prioritise changes that solve a repeated, consequential problem. Rename an ambiguous category, move an important route or reduce an unnecessary level of hierarchy. Change a limited set of things, then repeat the relevant tasks.
Keep the reasoning with the design record. A note explaining why a label changed is more useful than a screenshot alone, especially when a future editor is tempted to replace a plain phrase with an internal department name.