Category Labels - Be Careful
Every website uses category labels to support high level navigation choices. There may also be, depending upon content depth, sub-category labels and sub-sub-category labels. Site visitors typically scan the labels quickly, rather than read them carefully. When attempting to achieve a specific goal, visitors may scan the labels for a term they have in mind. If the Website???s category labels do not match the terms the visitors have in mind, they will have difficulty locating the category, and they may conclude that the content does not exist on the site.
Here is a great example:
In a recent WebIQ study, numerous visitors came to our client’s site to purchase calendars. Many of the visitors who failed in this mission stated that the reason for failure was that they could not find calendars on the site. In the shopping area of the site, calendars are displayed as the fourth item down in a list of 12 shopping categories. However, the category label read “2005 calendars”. Since we read left to right, users were scanning the list of categories, seeing the 2005 and never reading far enough over to catch the word “calendar”. If the site changes the category label to “Calendars - 2005″ the problem is solved.
Our recommendation: know the term that your visitors are looking for when they search the categories and make this the first term in the category label.