Navigation Brainstorming!

[telophase]

Working on the navigation for the new ConDFW site. Need categorization/sorting help.



So we've got these pages:

About/FAQ -- (what it says on the box)
Hotel -- (info about the hotel, room price, directions, etc.)
Membership and Registration-- (how to register for the con)*
Program Book -- (info on how to buy ads)
Short Story Contest-- (info on how to enter)
T-Shirts -- (price of shirts, asking for submissions for shirt art)
Volunteers -- (how to volunteer for the con)
Art Show -- (how to get panels in the art show)
Book Swap -- (what it is, what the swap rates are)
Dealers' Room -- (how to get a table in the dealers' room)
Gaming -- (description of the sort of games played there)
Programming -- (panel descriptions)
Guests of Honor -- (list of guests of honor)
Panelists-- (list of guests who are not GoH)
Convention Hours -- (when various bits of the con are open)

* Needs both words because people can't figure it out if just one or the other is there. I learned this last year when I allowed comments on the site. You had to register with the site to leave comments, because of spam, and I had a not-insignificant number of people completely miss the giant MEMBERSHIP link in the contents on the side, and scroll aaaaaall the way to the bottom of the page where a teeny-tiny link said "Register" underneath "Site Meta" and attempt to register for the convention there.

What I need is to organize these into 3 or 4 well-named categories so that people can find them on a drop-down menu. You can see what I've got at the moment at the test site. (No need to report broken links/design stuff/weirdness because I am only partway through building the site. Also, I am using last years' information as test info.)

I'm not really happy with my current categories or the odds of other poeple figuring them out so far, suggestions gladly taken! There are 3 right now, they can become 4. I don't really want to go to 5 unless I am convinced otherwise.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

It's pretty clear now.

If you did break out another category---for the lazy, I'd make it simply be a top-level link to the FAQ and link out to the other stuff that people ought to find by looking at the menus, from there.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

From the guest liaison of the con, who is always infuriating to deal with as he looks at websites with no sense whatsoever, as in he cannot make logical inferences about what should be where. (OTOH, if I design a website that he has no problem with, nobody else should have a problem with it either.):

"> Do we need to have a "purchase a dealers room table" and/or "purchase art
> show space" under the "about" section? I just want to make sure that
> everyone would be clear that this is under the "At the con" section."

So ... yeah. *headdesk*

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

I would expect those to be subheads under "Dealer's Room" and "Art Show." ...To the extent that I believe I'd be perplexed to find them elsewhere.

A "Vendors" header e.g. implies "suppliers to the con."

Good luck, good sport.