Many sites use them - utility links at the base of the content or lower on the page that act as a secondary navigation, particularly to things that aren't defined in the primary navigation (orphan pages, corporate links, etc.). For a project that I'm working on, the client has asked that these links be placed at the very bottom of the page - below the disclaimers, the legal jargon, the copyright.
The pages in question - Site Map, Contact Us, Register for Updates - are truly secondary content NOT represented in the main navigation (well, register is). Unfortunately, these links can NOT be placed in the header utility links because of other required content. So, either we add them to the main navigation (which the client doesn't want to do) or they end up at the bottom. I know that people look for those links of very large sites - portals, large e-commerce sites, etc. because they know that it is often the quickest way to find links to the Site Map, Customer Service, Help, etc. However, I'm not sure that the paradigm has made the crossover to smaller sites and I'm worried that putting utility links at the absolute bottom of the page will essentially bury them where no one will ever find them. Does anyone else have any insights to this? Am I right that putting those links at the bottom will end up making them useless, or does that 'big site' philosophy of looking at the bottom of the page for secondary content links carry over to all sites? Marty DeAngelo User Experience Lead | D I G I T A S H E A L T H 229 South 18th Street | Rittenhouse Square | Philadelphia, PA 19103 | USA mdeangel [EMAIL PROTECTED] digitashealth [d0t] com <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | www.digitashealth.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
