User blog:Alwaysmore2hear/Navigation Galleries and Main Pages

The main page of a wiki serves as the gateway into a community’s best content. An effective main page should highlight the most important and popular content while also being inviting. One of the recommended elements of main page design is a visually pleasing navigation gallery with prominent images highlighting the most popular and important pieces of content. And we are now recommending that navigation galleries be one of the first things a user sees when arriving to a wiki’s main page.

In recent research on the Game of Thrones and Arrowverse communities, FANDOM found that navigation galleries are by far the most engaged with elements on the main page, getting more clicks than anything else on the page. In fact, these galleries received between 13% and 24% of the total clicks on the main page, both Game of Thrones and Arrowverse use navigation galleries to highlight characters.

We have also found that individual pieces of content that can be represented as an image are the most searched for: characters, weapons, locations, and more. They are also great for SEO. As an example, see the Overwatch Wiki.

The takeaway of this research is that we now recommend that navigation galleries be placed in a prominent position as close to the top of the main page as possible so that it’s easy for users to find what they are looking for. They should be right below a welcome message and a quick summary of what the community is about.

While there are many other interesting elements that communities include on main pages, whether they be social media links, videos and even featured article portals, it’s these navigation galleries are what users are clicking on the most.

Whether you are creating a new community or updating an established community, pushing your navigation gallery close to the top of the page direct users to the content they are most often looking for.

Over the next few months, we’ll be posting a series of blogs discussing tips for getting your wiki to be even more SEO friendly, so stay tuned!