Navigating Business School Websites

The best website navigation systems appear so straightforward that you don’t think twice about how to use them. Like using a door handle to open a door.

But often behind this simplicity is a complex information architecture. Navigation menus reflect this structure and communicate to our visitors how content is organized and prioritized.

Beyond helping web visitors find information, navigation menus help them understand what we’re about: who we are, what we do, and how we can help. Navigation menus communicate value.

Are we innovative? Are we student-centric? Are we mission-driven? Are we diverse?

To think more critically about our own navigation systems, it helps to understand the landscape. What does simple and complex look like? What can we learn from other schools to improve our own website navigation and what pitfalls do we want to avoid? Let’s take a look and start answering these questions.

Despite the obvious similarities in purpose and function between higher ed websites, it’s our differences that reflect the value we want to communicate. So, to kick off this discussion, we’re honing in on a segment of higher ed: business schools.

In March 2017 we reviewed navigation systems for 299 business school websites from two overlapping sources: 2017 Best Business School Rankings by U.S. News & World Report and Best 294 Business Schools 2017 Edition by Princeton Review.

Persistent Navigation Menus

To get a broad sense of how schools organize navigation menus and the possible paths user are offered for finding and discovering content, we first looked at persistent header navigation menus—in other words, menus that remain visible no matter what page you’re on.

Most business schools use two or three persistent navigation menus and that trend doesn’t change much when viewing these websites on mobile devices. Although, the use of a single navigation menu is twice as likely to appear when viewed on mobile rather than desktop.

Thirteen percent of desktop views and 9% of mobile views contain four or more navigation menus.

Eighty percent of business schools use a responsive web design and 33% of mobile views contain fewer menus than desktop views.

Non-Menu Header Elements

Navigation systems include more than menus. Persistent calls-to-action, social media links, and search boxes have a big impact on findability.

Persistent call-to-action links are used on many business school websites (both desktop and mobile views), guiding users to:

• “Give”
• “Apply Now”
• “Request Information”
• “Visit Us”
• “Recruit”

Because these persistent calls-to-action appear on every page, they frequently seem irrelevant to on-page content.

How relevant is Apply or Give if you’re a current student completing a “Returning Student Housing Form” form or reading academic advising resources?

Only 13% of business school websites contain social media links in the header—and even fewer sites display them on mobile devices. Eight-seven percent of schools include social media links in the footer, or not at all.

Predictably, nearly all business school websites display a search box on desktop and mobile—although, curiously, not all websites include them.

Information Architecture

User-friendly navigation menus have less to do about the number of options and more to do with the organization and labeling of menus and links.

Navigation menus reflect your website content hierarchy. If website visitors don’t understand the purpose of menus (and other navigation elements) or how topics relate to each other, they can’t make good choices about where to go.

Since 84% of business school websites contain more than one navigation menu, the need for clearly distinct and purposeful menus was a prominent theme in our review.

Navigation Menu Organization & Structure

During our review, we found many websites had confusing menu options. Which menu is the primary menu? Secondary? Tertiary?

Visitors unsure about the first step to take on your website are likely to become frustrated and untrusting. At best, they will perceive you as unhelpful.

Hull College of Business at Augusta University uses a complex menu structure with multiple tiers, plus calls-to-action. Some menus are visible by default, others are dropdown menus.

Vague menu labels, like “Resources” and “Info For,” don’t clarify purpose and some menu links appear redundant even if they’re not.

Erivan K. Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University also uses a complex multi-tier menu structure. Although there is a more clear visual divide between global navigation menus (used to navigate all of Saint Joseph’s University) and local navigation menus (used to navigate the School of Business), the more prominent vertical navigation menu contains an odd assortment of links and it’s unclear how that menu relates to the less-prominent (but more relevant) horizontal tabbed navigation menu.

Simple, straightforward navigation menus are rare for business school websites. Even more rare are websites that contain just one menu, like the one used by Cornell SC Johnson College of Business website.

However, organizational structure also plays a role in how menus are organized and how simple or complex they appear. The Cornell SC Johnson College of Business website is a parent website for three school websites, including Dyson, The Hotel School, and Johnson. While Dyson (April 2017 screenshot) and Johnson (April 2017 screenshot) maintain a simple single-tier menu structure, The Hotel School (April 2017 screenshot) uses a more common two-tier structure, plus persistent calls-to-action.

Mason School of Business at William and Mary has a simple two-menu structure. It’s clear the lower large green menu is primary and the small upper-menu is secondary. However, the hierarchy is less clear when viewed on mobile, where the secondary menu appears prioritized above the primary menu.

D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University also uses a simple two-menu structure, but when viewed on mobile the secondary menu moves to the bottom of the primary menu to better-reflect the proper content hierarchy.

Audience-Based Navigation Menus

Audience-based navigation menus can be a helpful way to simplify navigation for secondary audiences, such as internal users. However, it becomes a problem when there isn’t a clear relationship between topic-based navigation menus and audience-based menus. It can cause confusion about where content “lives” and where audiences should look for information.

Seattle Pacific University School of Business prioritizes audience-based navigation. Because the same links can be found within multiple menus it’s unclear where to start looking for information. Also, the priority of topics changes between menus, so there is confusion about what is most important.

USC Marshall School of Business includes an audience-based navigation, but it’s clearly secondary to the main topic-based navigation. For new visitors, there is clear guidance towards the primary menu with topics focused on prospective students.

Hidden Navigation Menus

It’s easy to think that hiding the primary navigation menu by default on desktops will simplify navigation—like we often think about our website when viewed on mobile. After all, hiding the menu will allow users to focus on the page content, free of distraction. But, our review found that more often than not “hidden menus” are used to hide complexity rather than resolve it.

So, what at first seems refreshingly simple, quickly becomes overwhelming.

Quinnipiac School of Business includes a very simple header with a prominent hamburger menu link for displaying the primary navigation menu. At first, it’s easy to mistake this as the navigation menu for the School of Business which is lower on the page below the hero image.

The open hamburger menu reveals 41 links within nine groups. You would imagine every link you could possible want would be here, but surprisingly there is no link the School of Business, although there are direct links to other schools within the University. This complex menu is masked user-friendly by a simple menu icon.

University of San Diego School of Business uses a similar web design and layout as Quinnipiac School of Business, with a hamburger icon for the primary navigation menu and the local navigation menu lower on the page below the hero image.

Although the primary navigation menu is big—including 28 links—the navigation menu is a bit easier to understand because links are more straightforward and organized, including when viewed on mobile.

Secondary Navigation Menus

Secondary menus (aka, “local navigation menus”) is a topic for another day, but these lower-level navigation menus are immensely important for website navigation. For all the complexity we see within primary navigation menus, problems are compounded for secondary navigation menus. Because these menus are less obvious, they often appear neglected and become findability sore spots.

Visual Hierarchy

Another way we communicate structure is through design and layout, which is used to illustrate information hierarchy and the relationships between menus.

Design has the ability to enhance (or hinder) findability and web navigation, but it can’t make up for poor information architecture.

Navigation Menu Design Trends

Just as “predictable” and “straightforward” are key for information architecture, so are they for designing navigation menus.

What do our users expect? And when they are faced with something different, how easily can they adapt? These are not simple questions to answer, but understanding how menus are generally designed helps us to manage users’ expectations.

Since responsive design and dropdown menus are commonly used, this is predictable functionality.

On the flip side, menus hidden by default and mega menus are less predictable.

Of course, these examples don’t tell the whole story and innovation is not achieved by the majority of websites. Menu designs will continue to change and improve (although, perhaps less quickly than we’d like).

Primary Navigation Menus

Because so many business school websites use multiple persistent navigation menus, we focused our review on primary navigation menus. This allows us to understand the most important topics and keywords on each website.

However, 30% of business school websites do not have a distinct primary navigation menu because these sites exist as subsections of a larger website and share a higher-level navigation menu. So, to hone in on more specific business school topics we also reviewed the secondary navigation menus for these websites.

Also, because “Home” links found in navigation menus don’t represent a topic or keyword, we ignored them in our analysis. Fourteen percent of primary navigation menus contained a “Home” menu link, while 86% of websites rely on logo links or breadcrumb links to navigate to the homepage.

Navigation Menu Categories

For the websites we reviewed, primary navigation menus ranged from 3- 18 menu items (categories), excluding subpage links. (Yes, 18 menu items is a lot.) Here’s the breakdown.

Primary navigation menus with three or four (category) items are rare. It’s refreshing to find these examples and not be overwhelmed with options. However, sometimes the use of only a few menu items results in topics that appear too broad and generic.

Fox School of Business finds a balance by using three menu items, but providing a short description to clarify each topic.

Generally, five to seven primary navigation menu items was the sweet spot for simple menus with clearly distinct categories.

Less than 10% of primary navigation menus contained more than eight menu items.

Most Common Navigation Menu Topics

To understand the emphasis business schools put on particular topics and how they prioritize content, we looked at the top 20 most common topics that appear in primary navigation menus (excluding the one-third of business school websites which don’t have a distinct primary menu).

About and academics are predictably the most popular topics, overall. Other popular topics include alumni, faculty & research, careers, and executive education.

Admissions and student life content are noticeably absent from the top of the list of most common topics, with only 10% of business schools using it. Some schools deprioritize admissions content in favor of calls-to-action, such as apply and request information. Other schools simply desire to put academics and research content front and center.

Unlike many other higher ed websites, business schools emphasize alumni stories more than student life. In other words, they focus on the value of the academic degree by illustrating business outcomes rather than the academic experience.

Uncommon Navigation Menu Topics

Primary navigation menus on business school websites contain hundreds of other topics that are used to tell a unique story and emphasize value.

For example, these are topics that appear in 1% or less of business school primary navigation menus:

Navigation Menu Topic Labels

Although schools organize content by similar topics, they use a much broader range of category labels to define those topics.

Menu Labels Used to Describe “Academics”:

Menu Labels Used to Describe “Careers”:

Menu Labels Used to Describe “Give”:

The words we use have meaning and sometimes not the meaning we intend. Donate, Give, Invest, and Support may be used to describe the same content, but you and I and others relate to those words differently. What do these words mean to you? What do they mean to your audiences? How relevant are those keywords in search results?

Similarly, how does Career Management compare to Careers + Outcomes or Your Global Career?

How about Academic Programs, Areas of Study, and Majors and Degrees? Do those communicate something different than Academics?

The Acton School of Business website uses primary navigation menu contains uncommon labels, including Acton MBA instead of Academics, and MBA Application instead of Admissions. On Demand and Edge are also unique menu item labels used to describe distinguishing academic programs.

The Fowler College of Business Administration primary navigation menu contains common menu item labels, but they are grouped in an interesting way. Programs & Admissions and Students & Alumni are unusual categories but make sense.

Navigation Menu Keywords

We need the right words to convey the right meaning, but as we’ve seen, some words are more predictable than others and may impact people’s ability to find what they’re looking for.

However, if we care about who we talk to and what we say, we can’t simply rely on commonplace words. We also have to consider what we want to communicate.

A large part off this is SEO, but it’s also about usability and making website navigation clear and easy.

During our review of business school websites, we looked at common keywords used to label content.

Branded Keywords

Although less common, we found 27% of schools use menu labels that reflect their brand. For some schools, this means replacing About with About [School Name] or Why [School Name]?, while other schools take a bolder approach and use labels that reflect their brand message.

Unique on-brand menu labels:

Uncommon Keywords

Uncommon keywords have the potential to be a valuable SEO asset, as well as a usability risk.

If no other school is talking about sustainability or social impact and prospective students, faculty, and donors look for that, those become valuable keywords. However, if your school uses the keyword distance learning and prospective students are searching for online programs, that keyword or phrase becomes a risk.

Primary navigation keywords appearing on only one business school website:

Primary navigation keywords appearing on 1-5% of business school websites:

Simple Navigation is Hard

Findability is a complex topic with many other aspects to explore. Looking at website navigation menus gives us a glimpse at how business schools choose to organize, prioritize, and label information. Competing websites don’t hold all the answers, but they help us to ask the right questions. Because innovation doesn’t happen in a silo.

Predictability is the key to usability and findability, however creating a navigation system that is simple and easy to use is not obvious. We have to consider our users’ needs and expectations as well as our own goals and priorities. And that’s hard.

Next, this exploratory series will look at how the choices we make regarding website navigation impact the user experience.

How does your institution make decisions about website navigation? Do your navigation menus enhance or hinder findability?