Orienting your visitors is an important part of making sure they get of your site what you’ve brought them there for. Remember the “old days” when we didn’t have a GPS and we had to sort out our way through places we were unfamiliar with by trying to decipher a map? Having a GPS keep you on track keeps the drive stress-free and easy, even if you’re by yourself.

Helping your users keep track of where they are in your site is like posting a “you are here” sign, or a GPS marker showing where they’ve come from. Without this, users much use up their ever-so-valuable short-term memory on keeping your site in context, rather than taking in the content on your site.

Devices to Keep Your Visitors Oriented

There are a number of devices you can use to keep your visitors oriented on your site. It’s key to make sure that you provide 3 pieces of information as a reference, so they don’t have to keep track of it: 

1. Where they are generally on your site.
2. Where they came from.
3. What they can go (especially laterally).

To aid in highlighting these things in a split-second to your visitors, here are some tools you can use.

• Breadcrumbs. I list this first, not because it is the best, but because it is very common. Breadcrumbs can be a good device, because they generally provide both items 1 and 2 from the list above. However, 2 is not always reliable, and they tend to show a single path, rather than a general orientational feel of your site. They’re very 1-dimensional in nature. That can be ok, but it needs to be in the context of a larger plan.
• Highlighting menus. This is also very common. Having said that, I’m constantly surprised just how often sites don’t make use of this. Make sure to highlight as many levels as possible to show a fuller path of where the user is at.
• Vertical breadcrumbs. This may be a term we coined. What we me by this is showing vertical (rather than the typical horizontal) breadcrumb, generally on the left sidebar. This shows the visitor where they are in the hierarchy all the way from the top down, to their current section. The best thing about this particular device is that it also allows users to see the items just next to it the site hierarchy. This makes it easy to make a small lateral shift, without starting over from a higher level. 
• Expanding menus. Clickable menus tend to be more friendly than hover menus, but the great thing about both of them is they provide an easy way to essentially showcase your sitemap from any page on the site. Allowing your users to familiarize themselves with your information architecture (without the old school “sitemap” page), is a great way to help them feel comfortable about the decisions they are making about navigating your site.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Here’s several things that you’ll unfortunately probably see too often around the web. These things cause problems for visitors, though some are definitely better than nothing.

• Highlighting on only the top level menu item. Better than nothing, yes. However this only tells a visitor which of several sections of the site they are in.
• Burying active items in drop-down menus. Drop down menus make it hard to show case the user’s current location. While some active class is better than nothing, it’s better to provide an additional device if you’re going to make use of a dropdown menu.
• Assuming the user will remember where they are. Perhaps this has been beaten to death by now, but this is something I hear far too often. “Our users are smart, they can figure it out.” This is a true statement; but if they must figure it out, that’s less they’ll be able (or subconsciously willing, rather) to glean from your site as a whole.
• Depending on your “sitemap.” Sitemaps aren’t something humans tend to seek out any more. They can be good for search engines, but if a human actually needs to go there to see your structure, there’s room for growth elsewhere.