Mystery meat navigation (also abbreviated MMN) is a term used to describe user interfaces in which it is extremely difficult for users to discern the destinations of navigational hyperlinks—or, in severe cases, even to determine where the hyperlinks are. The typical form of MMN is represented by menus composed of icons that are replaced with text only when the mouse cursor hovers over them. Annoying.

Yep, your navigation makes visitors sick.

In short, Mystery Meat Navigation that makes your website useless by preventing your visitors from easily getting to the other links in and pages on your site, and sometimes even figuring out what a link points to without putting the mouse cursor over it.

While the guy in the sales department in-house web expert thought it would be neato to make all your buttons a look like your logo, and force you to hover over them so they’ll show the destination, your users think otherwise. If you analyze your stats, I bet your Bounce Rate and Visit Duration are not so good. (More about those terms in another post.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wguO93zZd-U]

Lesson: Don’t use Mystery Meat Navigation. Clear, concise links will help your visitors get what they need…and it’s not so bad for search engines, either.

Up next: 3D Graphics