An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
According to the experts, 7 is the maximum number of choices you should give somebody on a website at any one time.
That means no more than 7 links in navigation
Here’s a genuine example of how NOT to do it.
That screen shot’s from the French site, C Discount. Generally it’s quite a professional looking site (I’ve seen worse, anyway). However, there are 43 (yes 43!) links in the navigation at the top of the page. They would have been much better to have just 7 or 8 links on the homepage and then, when somebody clicks on a section (like “DVD” or “Boutique”), revealing a sub-menu with a further 5-7 links.
This way, you’re not asking the customer to choose between dozens of things in one go. If they did this, the site would be easier to use and I’d expect them to make more sales - which, after all, should be the goal of the website.
Ah, but sometimes you wish to impress visitors with what a great selection you have, and how many choices you offer! Note that in the screenshot of Cdiscount you present, the tabs are not just all equal. They are grouped by sur-tabs. I count ten sur-tabs (12 if you include the undivided Account tab and the search box), with at most 12 in each sub-group. So what you're really getting is a tree, not a simple list (like that at the bottom of that page, which is more like an index) and each uses a clear 1- or 2-word description, so that they all fit in a simple toolbar space, and still leave plenty of room for displays of featured ads.
Now, compare that with iVirtua's home page, which has 20 items at the top (not counting the Google ads, which change in number), and then lists links to 21 fora, grouped by 7 often-overlapping sur-groups, and with both forum and group names reading entire lists of possible topics areas, and the whole thing needing to scroll at least 11 pages to see it all! The buzzword "media" shows up 19 times in 14 of those headings!
I'd say that iVirtua could improve a lot by emulating Cdiscount's good example.
Digg Topic
Tag topic on On del.icio.us
Technorati Search
Post to Slashdot
Note that in the screenshot of 
