The Tendo View

My recent trip to New England reminded me of one of the things I love about the East Coast: People know how to drive. By that I mean they know that if they’re driving more slowly on a highway than others around them, they move to the right lanes to let faster drivers pass on the left. There’s a good reason for that. When you pass a car on its left side, the driver can see you the entire time. If you pass on the right, you risk falling into the driver’s blind spot where he or she can’t see you. You always want to make sure other drivers can *see* where you are, so passing on the left makes good sense, as does moving right to let passers pass. With all due respect to my West Coast friends, most California drivers don’t subscribe to this.

So how have East Coast drivers learned the navigational habit of moving right to let faster drivers pass on the left? Is it a cultural phenomenon? Or is it the signs along the highways saying, “Slower drivers move to right lanes?” Is that all it takes? Have you ever really noticed all of the signs on highways? There are tons of them. Some tell truckers to avoid the left lanes. Others tell you how fast you should go. Still more indicate where exits will lead and how many miles you’ve gone. Directional signs tell you whether the exit road goes north or south, east or west.  Or toward what town.

As I drove from Boston to New Hampshire to Maine and back again, I started thinking of highways as a big Web page, and exits as calls to action (yeah, call me a Web content geek). The highway signs were equivalent to Web navigational aids—telling me where I was along my journey, how cautious I should be (e.g.,”road work next 6 miles”), where I could go from a certain point, how far my destination was, etc. And I wondered, if we create Web pages with navigational aids like highway signs, how much more effective would they be? What can Web content strategists learn from the navigational aids that have been supporting the world’s highway systems for decades? Should we adopt standard symbols (think Stop signs or Railroad Crossing icons) so that Web audiences learn a common visual language for navigating a content journey?

What do you think? How do you help your audience navigate the Web journey you offer them?