In website design, nav bars can be found in many different places, but once its orientation has been established, typically on the homepage, it tends to stick. TBD.com, a DC-based TV station and news site, takes a more flexible approach to their nav bar placement. On the homepage, it appears beneath their featured stories, while on the interior pages it appears directly beneath the logo. This is the first time I have ever seen this.
Pros: It almost establishes this mini-site that exists entirely above the fold, where the top hav bar almost acts as a footer, which is kind of a neat effect. (This can also be a con since it cuts the reader off from the content beneath the nav bar, discouraging vertical scrolling.) The very top of the page also feels less cluttered.
Cons: It’s a little disorienting to the reader to have a nav bar that migrates. But to be fair, this nav bar is not migrating that far.
A common mantra for designers of editorial sites is to treat every page as its own homepage. So much site traffic is from referrals—search engines and linkage—that a large portion of your audience will never see your actual homepage, where you’ve painstakingly arranged your most recent content into an inviting mix. Therefore you must reserve space on each interior page to feature content from around the site. Typically, this starts above the fold.
NYTimes.com, however, bucks this trend. In the right rail, they do very little promotion of content. In fact, it isn’t until the reader reaches that bottom of the page that they unleash their full arsenal: a pop-up link to a related article, a list of related articles on NYTimes.com and around the web, and a row of a photos promoting other content.
Why wait until the bottom of any article?
Are they trying to avoid clutter? Are they really that respectful of the content? Do they not want to distract from the reading experience? If so, they don’t seem have any problems filling the right rail with ads. Also, consider how often you actually finish an article. Think about when your eye starts to wander. Is it at the bottom?
As for related articles, I can see the usefulness of having them at the bottom of the page. If you’re truly interested in a topic, there’s a good chance you’ll read the entirely article—and end up at the bottom perhaps hungry for more. But why not promote related content higher on the page.
I know the Times does their research. I’m very curious to see what supports this layout.
