Web site navigational links

I can't answer this. You're assuming one and only one navigational menu. In most cases I would put what I call "administrivia" links in a separate menu. That means home/about us/contact us etc. unless there is not a lot of other content in the main navigation.

Edit: Okay, I'll edit it based on a hypothetical situation, but most of the time I would not put those particular links all in one menu. Oh, and I'd also like to know what you mean by "news/blog" - if it's boring news about what the company is doing then it would be lower down than interesting link-worthy content about the industry.

I am assuming one navigational menu for all the items listed, yes. While you might put some links in a separate menu, my gut feeling is that the majority of sites do not do that. That's a good thought to bring up, though, so as part of my project I will plan on taking a random sampling of some web sites and see how many of them separate the menu out like you'd mentioned.

As far as the "news/blog" listing, my intention is for the sections to be approached somewhat as if you don't know yet what the sections might evolve into.

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

I gave you a lot more in the submit form.

Basically, placement always depends on what is important to the site. For a band site, for example, the calendar would be more important than other sites. For a photographer, the gallery is most important. If you have a good blog/news area, it is more important than it would be if you had a bad blog. If you want to encourage people to contact you directly you would put "contact us" up higher than you would if you wanted people to find information on the site first.

Are you restricting this survey to smaller sites or something? Small business sites? I'm trying to think of any sites that have a simple one-dimensional navigation scheme... any kind of a bigger site would have multiple navigation menus. We all know the "rule of 7" Actually, I'm having trouble thinking of any site I visit regularly that only has a single navigation menu...

When I design navigation I always but the homepage link first. Then after that, the real content, like products and services, gallery, news/blog, calendar etc. The order of that stuff really depends on the type of business it is. Like Megan said, if it's a photographer's site, gallery is the most important. So I would place that right after the home link. After those links, I would place about us, and then contact us. That's how I tend to read a website, so that's the way I order my links.

I'm definitely talking about simple or small-business sites.

This survey, in order to work, has to assume a general, non-specific nature for the non-existent site. That is also why I put a place for other comments. And I appreciate the comments, of course. So far, all the comments I've received are on target with my own beliefs. Specifically, the assertion that the order on a specific site will vary based on the nature of that site.

Interesting results, so far. I'm looking forward to seeing the distributions of individual menu items.

I'd like to think you're going to publish the results on this board rather than just emailing us.

You can think whatever you like.

Seriously, I probably will post a link to the final results here, as I frequent this board. But people can access the survey from anywhere, not just this board. So others may want the results as well.

That, and the survey is just a small part of a much larger project. So the "results" will not just be statistics of the survey, but lots of other information as well.

Any final takers of the survey? I'm getting ready to pull it down at the end of this week, and will start working on the part of my project that looks at the data.

Of course, any comments here are welcome as well, and will be included in the comments part of this project.