It is very pleasing to hear in many concept workshops – “A maximum of 7 navigation items, correct?”
This truly shows that core elements of usability have made the round and that people are familiar with them.
However, real life is not always that easy. Let’s look at some issues:
The seven point rule:
It is true and has been psychologically proven that the human brain best can recall 7 items and that the brain capacity after that becomes lower. This is certainly true for example shopping lists. However, from this also the rule: No more than 7 navigation items has been deducted.
Is it applicable? Yes and no.
However, what are some exceptions?
For example news sites: Users are familiar with the categories of their daily newspaper such as news, entertainment, sports, weather etc. There it is advisable to retain the structure readers are familiar with.
# Simply too much content
Sometimes it also can help to add an additional top level item to avoid that the site will have too many navigational hierarchies.
# Linking to sub-sites
For example yahoo links to many sub-sites from its main portal and offers a link to view all other categories. This is another way to structure a huge amount many companies are following: Showing the main entries to everybody and adding an additional link to view all navigation items.
Read the entire series:
Part 1: How to structure content?
Part 3: Dynamic or static navigation
Part 4: Navigation and the customer life cycle
Part 5: Global navigation