Research suggests students are not navigating to secondary tabs on LibGuides because they expect to find what they need on the Home tab (Bergstrom-Lynch, 2019).
In an example study, Home tab page views represented over half of the total views in the sample (Castro-Gessner et al, 2013).
Put the most important information on the Home page. For many of our research guides, that will include a list of key databases. If students are unlikely to look beyond your Home page, what information do you really want them to have?
LibGuides offers six different guide "Types." When creating a new guide, you are required to assign it a type. You can change your guide type at any time by selecting the pencil icon beside "Type" on the edit screen.
There is no difference in defaults, layout, or functionality of the different guide types. Exception: Internal guides and Template guides are for internal use only and not visible to users.
The side menu contains the names of your guide pages. Based on what we know of common web reading practices, it is one of the first places a user will look when they arrive at your guide.
We recommend setting any guide containing more than two pages of content to show Box-level navigation for selected page. Box-level navigation for the selected page will allow users to quickly see an overview of the content they can expect to find on the guide page (Hyams, 2020). This will increase usability and draw attention to the content of your page without users needing to scroll. Below you will find examples of what the side navigation looks like on a guide with and without box-level navigation.
To set your guide to box-level navigation
Assign a friendly URL to your guide and to each page on your guide. A friendly URL is much clearer for students and easier to put on a handout or PowerPoint slide.
If you have existing friendly URLs that do not follow these guidelines (like the one in the screenshot), do not edit your friendly URLs. Just keep the following in mind for next time:
To create a friendly URL, click on the pencil icon beside URL to change it to something meaningful.
This will create a friendly URL for your guide. Once you have done this, you will be able to create friendly URLs for each page. To do so, click on the page you would like to edit. Toward the top of the page, you will find a pencil icon that allows you to edit the URL for that specific page.
Visual aids can be helpful in offering a step-by-step overview of a process. However, research has shown that screenshots of search boxes cause confusion and frustration for users. Why? Because they think they are real search boxes. Avoid.