IA / usability - top menu items best practice

[murraybiscuit]

Assuming a traditional dropdown / flyout nav. Is it better to do this:

Parent category (clicks to overview or doesn't click through)
|-- Overview
|-- Child 1
|-- Child 2

or

Parent category (overview)
|-- Child 1
|-- Child 2

I think option 2 is better, but sometimes I find the first more intuitive as the parent is more of a shell/container rather than a content item itself.

How do you guys navigate a site, what do you expect as convention?

 

[BobsLawnService]

If the overview is large enough to warrant its own section then the first one. Otherwise if it is a short summary then the second.

If possible less clicking is better.

Disclaimer: I'm not really a web UI designer.

 

[cybershark]

How many parents are there?

 

[murraybiscuit]

How many parents are there?

just a top level and children.

 

[murraybiscuit]

If the overview is large enough to warrant its own section then the first one. Otherwise if it is a short summary then the second.

If possible less clicking is better.

Disclaimer: I'm not really a web UI designer.

i guess it does come down to amount of content. if you have a lot of content in the overview, it's not an overview anymore, move it to a separate page. problem is sometimes, as a user, i ignore top level/nesting items, as i assume that it may end up being the first nav item any way. for this project, it makes more sense for me to keep the overview on the parent page, and ensure that it gets linked to from other parts of the site.