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Contents of the Menu Options

In this issue, we will discuss some general concepts that have to be kept in mind when defining what type of content to place in the browsing bars. By María José Serres, from the ARTech's marketing team.

What contents should be located in the browsing bars?

Although contents depend on each site, in web sites it is possible to generalize their location. As a matter of fact, this generalization has been applied to all of ARTech's sites as well as to the company's intranet. These concepts may be also extrapolated beyond web sites and taken into consideration when developing web applications.

Corporate sites

In general, the two browsing bars are used in corporate sites; the top and left menus are located here.

The top menu has the site's general browsing options that, independent from the site's content, are sought regardless of whether the site is known or not.

The options more frequently included in the top menu are:

- Link to a home page
- Link to a contact page where you can find: phone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses, etc. When applicable, you may also include a contact form. We recommend that this particular link target a page containing all the information instead of being just an e-mail address.
- Site's map
- About us: here, the company's objective is described and its members presented. Sometimes, this information may be found under one of the left menu options. In case the site does not have an area for this purpose, it is located in the top menu.

More than one menu may be found in the upper part. Many times, an "area-menu" is included in order to classify the information displayed in the site, per product, department, etc.

The left menu depends on the content of the site, and in general it shows the way to go in order to get to know the company and/or product, access the different services, etc. (downloads, support, etc.) In large corporate sites, the left menu changes depending on the area/product that a person is visiting, and it is generally classified by an area-menu located in the upper browsing bar.


Intranets

The same concepts applied in the corporate sites may be applied for the intranets in spite of the fact that the left menu is not always used. However, locating a content-dependent menu in some other place inside the page is common. This menu expands the options found in this particular area or has links to other areas related to the current page.

Related
Usability Tips: Browsing Consistency
Browsing: Visibility and Proportions
Typography
Text Alignment
Fonts
Usability: Downloading Speed