Drill-Down Recommendations

Here are a few suggestions to keep in mind when considering a drill-down approach for your site:

• Limit categories as much possible: Users become increasingly disoriented as they go deeper into a site. With a Mobile Web site, their tolerance often stops at about five levels – the fewer levels the better You should adjust this number upwards when targeting more capable devices.
• Attempt to limit links to ten per page unless you know that the device can present more information well: You should code your links with accesskeys, so that the user can use the phone keypad to navigate links. We recommend a assigning up to ten accesskeys to any page (0–9) to ensure compatibility with older devices. You should adjust this number upwards when targeting more capable devices that can display this information better.
• Provide at least one content item with each category page i.e. avoid empty links: Giving users at least one sample of the content within a category is a good way to make sure that users get to the right place. Consider placing a link to the featured content with a one or two sentence overview. The shorter, the better.
• Prioritize links by activity or popularity: This is often referred to as “deck placement.” Sorting links in order by frequency of access ensures that the most sought-after content appears first on the list. You improve a user’s chances of getting to the right destination. The drawback, however, is that lower listed and newer items won’t perform as well. You can work around this by maintaining some editorial control and featuring specific categories or content within the category.

 

Once you determine your content requirements and define your category structure and labels, compile them into a simple site map. This gives you a high-level overview of your information space. Beware: It won’t give you a complete idea of how the real site interaction will work – testing on real mobile devices is always the best way to check this.