Today, it’s time to talk about website navigation. The year before I received my bachlors degree I had an internship in Salt Lake City that involved the redesign of a very complicated, data intensive site. All summer long, the debate continued: should we have 8 navigation links or 9. Eight was the max our designers recommended, but the commincations director couldn’t see how we could have access to all the info we needed without 9.

Likewise, resorts have a lot of info. And by a lot, I mean enough to choke your average camel. Let’s first take a look at the numbers and they see if we can do some analysis and see how to keep navigation as simple as possible while linking to information a visitor needs.

WEBSITE NAVIGATION ELEMENTS

• The Mountain (92%)
• Activities & Events (82%)
• Lessons (68%)
• Groups & Families (60%)
• Trip Planner (54%)
• Lift Tickets & Rates (54%)
• Lodging & Dining (48%)
• Online Shopping (merch, rentals, etc.) (30%)
• Real Estate (24%)
• Village & Resort (18%)
• About (14%)
• Terrain Park (12%)
• Blog (8%)
• Directions (8%)
• Jobs (6%)
• Spa (6%)
• Deals (4%)

• Average Number of Navigation Options: 6.3

MY THOUGHTS
First, I’m glad that “The Mountain” is getting the attention it deserves, it is skiing after all :) However, what surprises me is that one need for newbies, lessons, shows up 68% of the time, and another need for newbies, directions, shows up 8% of the time.

Also, terrain parks are huge. Entire mountains have become parks, separate websites have been created for them, yet only 12% of websites include this in their navigation.

If I were to make the average nav menu then from this data it would be:

• The Mountain
• Activities & Events
• Lessons
• Groups & Families
• Trip Planner
• Lift Tickets & Rates

Which, honestly, isn’t to bad. It covers most areas, without being too long at just 6 elements. The order of the elements can be rearranged, but as far as content, I think it works quite nicely.

YOUR THOUGHTS
Enough of my rambling. What do you think? Is 6 elements about right for a nav menu? More? Less? What would you add or take away from the average list above? Love to hear your thoughts…

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.