Pattern 21: Canonical location *
AKA: You are here

You are trying to give users a SENSE OF LOCATION (15). Search engines are a commonly used entrance route into your site. They parachute users into a landscape from a SEARCH BOX (14) to a location that you cannot predict.

How do users know where they are in the site? How do they get back to the site without using the search engine again?

Therefore

Make sure the page name is displayed prominently and above the fold. Build ‘cross links’ across the site hierarchy. Use BREADCRUMBS (23) and a NAVIGATION BAR (25). Put the SITE LOGO AT TOP LEFT (24) on every page. Find a way to help the user record or bookmark the site and page addresses in the history.

Since they may interfere with navigation there should be NO FRAMES ON PUBLIC SITES (27). Allow users to GO BACK TO A SAFE PLACE (34).

Contributors and sources
Chris Simons, Gareth Sylvester-Bradley

There are several ways to reinforce the user’s sense of location. The first is to let then see where they are clearly with a prominent name for the page and an indication of its location relative to the site map. The page title can be used as a headline for the main content of the page. Try to use sensible and meaningful names for the page URLs as well. If possible use the title for the URL segment. This will assist users to locate pages in future and help search engines to locate and classify your content.

Refer to both SITE LOGO AT TOP LEFT (24), NAVIGATION BAR (25) and BREADCRUMBS (23) to see the different ways of telling users where they are. The first tells them whose web site they are on, regardless of how they got there. The second tells them there location relative to the broad structure of the site. Breadcrumbs show them the location in terms of a single path from the home page.

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