Page Comparison

Use the information on this page to learn how to update your site’s navigation, page URLs, and manage redirects. For best practice resources, visit the Getting Started guide.

On this page

Instructions

...

The importance of a clear site structure

The structure of your site is composed of the actual pages on your site and how those pages are organized. Your visitor’s path through those pages should be direct and clear.

Have you ever gone to a site and had no idea where anything was? You needed to get specific information, but had to go through three or four menu areas before finding what you needed? Or kept needing to backtrack? That is a site with poor site structure.

You probably felt frustrated. Or annoyed. Or maybe even angry. 

That’s how your visitors feel if they visit your site with a specific goal in mind, but get lost in your site because your site’s navigation is unclear.  

Don’t let your visitors get lost in your site. Make their path clear and their marker posts obvious.

How do I make my site's structure clear?

The first thing you want to do is make sure your site isn’t overloaded with pages. 

Analytics show that on average visitors go to 4 or less pages per site per visit.

If your site has 300 pages, no matter how well organized it is, your visitors won’t stick around long enough to find anything. 

So before adding a new page, ask if it would be more appropriate to add the content to an existing page. These days, people prefer to scroll through a longer page on a single topic, rather than clicking through multiple pages.

The ROT test

You don’t just want to make sure the physical number of pages is manageable. You also want to ensure the page content passes the ROT test: is the content Relevant, Outdated, or Trivial?

Relevant: Does this content benefit your audience? Does it support your site’s purpose?

Outdated: Is this information still current? Will it be outdated soon, and if so is there a plan to remove it at that point?

Trivial: Will this content help many people, or just one or two? If it’s just one or two, they may be better served emailing or calling. 

Navigation rules

There are a few basic rules when it comes to organizing your pages in your navigation.

Rule 1: menu layers

Every page (except your homepage) should be in your navigational menu.

Your homepage is linked at the top of every page in your site, so it’s redundant to add it to the navigational menu.

For all your other pages, adding them to a well-structured navigational menu makes it easier for visitors to find pages and navigate through your site. It also helps search engine crawlers to better understand your site.

You’re limited to three menu layers: top-level, secondary, and sub-secondary. Though you can technically add more layers, they will display the same as the sub-secondary menu items. 

Your menu has a hierarchical organization. Sub-secondary layers are nested under secondary layers, and secondary layers are nested under top-level navigation.

Your menu hierarchy should be structured so the pages in nested menus have the same theme/category as the parent menus.

Rule 2: menu items

Each menu should have 2-7 items - 5 is the ideal number, though.

Each menu area (top level menu or a single secondary or sub-secondary menu) needs a limited number of menu items.

Only one menu item, and the menu will get looked over.

More than seven and there are too many items for your visitor to scan - they’ll miss what may otherwise be important menu links.

Rule 3: naming conventions

Create topic-based menu titles that are unique to the page’s content.

Your visitors need to know what content they’ll find when they click on a menu link title, before the page loads.

As such, your menu link titles need to be specific to the page content. For example, “people” is not an effective menu link title. It could represent too many things - staff biographies, directory, faculty listings, grad students, etc.

Instead, you’ll want the specific content for that page, such as “Staff Biographies”.

Rule 4: menu-based navigation

Organize your menu so the most important (or most popular)
links are are the start and end of the menu.

People skim menus like they skim essays: they start with the beginning and end, then go into the middle if needed.

So organize your menu with the important stuff at the beginning and end.

...

Expand
title Updating navigation
Video Walkthrough You can check out a video walkthrough that covers the basics of managing your site's navigation.  Adding to navigation by editing a page Not all pages have this option. When editing a page, you'll see a "Menu Settings" option in the right sidebar of the page, if this option is available. If you have one of those pages, check the “Provide a menu link” box to add the link. Menu link title is the actual displayed text. Make it topical and focused. Description is text that appears on hover. It's not required, and is not beneficial for accessibility. Parent Item helps you build your structure. <PSU Primary Menu> puts this in the top-level. Anything else will place it in a sub-menu under the selected parent. Note: You can only select published pages as parent pages. Weight determines how high or low your menu item will display in the menu. There's an easier way to do this, though, under "Reordering your menu" on this page.  Save your changes Adding to navigation using the PSU Primary Menu You can add any page to your navigation menu using this option. However, your site's menu should be for navigating within your site. If you want to create links to other resources, do that using CTA and Link Blocks.  Go to the “Structure ￫ PSU Primary Menu ￫ Add Link” to create the menu link. Menu link title is the actual displayed text. Make it topical and focused. Link is where the link actually goes. If you've created the page already, you can start typing the page title and select it from the list of options. Note: You can only select published pages as parent pages. Enabled - leave this checked, otherwise the menu link won't display.  Description is text that appears on hover. It's not required, and is not beneficial for accessibility. Show as expanded - leave this unchecked, by default all our menu items show as expanded Parent Item helps you build your structure. <PSU Primary Menu> puts this in the top-level. Anything else will place it in a sub-menu under the selected parent.  Weight determines how high or low your menu item will display in the menu. There's an easier way to do this, though, under "Reordering your menu" on this page.  Save your changes Reordering your menu While you can use the weight to reorder menu items, it can get rather clunky. This is an easier method. However, you can only do this with menu links that have already been created. Go to the “Structure ￫ PSU Primary Menu".  Hover over the crosshairs next to the menu item you want to move.  Click and drag on the crosshairs to move the menu link item up or down. You can also create parent-child relationships with this (nesting menu items).  Save your changes.  Important note: When ordering your sub-navigation, secondary navigation without a third layer of navigation under it will always move to the end of the sub-menu. If all of your sub-menu navigation is secondary level, you can order it as desired. The same applied if all of your sub-menu navigation contains second and third layer navigation. However, if you have some sub-navigation that is mixed, then the secondary-only navigation will always be at the end of your menu structure.  Important information about top-level navigation Top-level navigation items can either be a direct links with no sub-navigation, or a clickable drop-down menu that displays sub-navigation. Sub-navigation is secondary navigation and beyond; the items that display in the drop-down mega menu. With the second option (having sub-navigation), the top-level item will not be accessible unless you add it to the sub-navigation menu. Instructions can be found below in "Creating top-level links with secondary navigation". For accessibility purposes, your top-level navigation items should either all be direct links with no sub-navigation, or all contain sub-navigation items.  This is because screen readers read the drop-down top-level navigation differently than direct links, so mixed top level navigation is difficult for screen reader users to interpret.  So if you have mixed navigation, use the instructions below to create a sub-menu for the single-item top-level navigation links which contains just the link to what would have been the top-level page. Your top-level menu is limited by the amount of space you have. When adding pages to it, review the spacing to see if you need to rename menu link titles so it doesn't look "shoved together".   Creating top-level links with sub-navigation (from scratch) Start by creating one of your sub-navigation pages. Alternatively, if you're adding a link in the sub-navigation to what would have been the top-level navigation link, make the top-level page instead. Add the page to the navigation menu, using the instructions in "Adding to navigation by editing a page" (at the top of this page). Important: the menu link title should be what you want the top-level navigation title to be. This can be different than the page name. Save your page. Now, follow the instruction in "Adding to navigation using the PSU Primary Menu" to create a new menu link: The menu link title should be what you want to display in the secondary navigation.  In the link field, type in the page title of the page you just created. The parent should be the top-level menu item you just created. Save your changes.

...