Navigation process guides user goes through a serial, multi-step process to complete some complex task.
A process step indicator (navigation bar) is often used to provide an overview to users about where they are and what they need to go through to finish the process.
The navigation process involves making a sequence of the pages, which is called navigation path.
The movement between the various pages is often driven by a local goal called navigation goal to search for the page that fulfills it.
There are three categories of navigation:
Structural navigation: connects one page to another based on the hierarchy of the site; on any page the user expect to be able to move to the page about it and pages below it.
Associate navigation: connects pages with similar topics and content, regardless of their location in the site; links tend to cross structural boundaries.
Utility navigation: Connect pages and features that keep people use the site itself; these may lie outside the main hierarchy of the site, and their only relationship to one another is their function.
In some browsers, users can also navigate through the web by typing only a domain name because the browsers will automatically expand it into a URL that may identified a website.
As websites have grown more complex, discovering the site has often to be followed by a second navigation process to find relevant information or pages within the site.
Many navigation tools provide explicit information, such as a site map, site index, tabs, or hierarchical menu, which also serve this function.
Navigation process
