Help us improve our navigation menu - make a difference!

Question

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navigation menu.gif [ 1.96 KiB | Viewed 3696 times ]

Do you visit GMAT Club often? Want to make it easier for you to navigate and jump from area to area? Here is your chance to impact the navigation menu.
Are there any resources it is missing right now?
What would make sense for you to have there?
Any suggestions?
Is it readable?
Is it helpful?
Anything at all?

If you hate it - we want to hear from you!
If you love it - we want to hear from you!
If it does not make sense to you, we want to hear from you!
If you are in the middle - we want to hear from you!
All suggestions are welcome and will be given Kudos! :wink:

Thank you in advance for your time and effort to improve this community.
BB, Founder.

-

Thank you in advance for your time and effort to improve this community. BB, Founder. -

gottabwise · Answer

Something that immediately came to mind was adding the following tabs under MBA on the main menu bar: Women MBA's and Minority MBA's. I was actually surprised to not find any dialogue about Management Leaders for Tomorrow, which helps prepare minority applicants. Also, women applicants likeyl have dialogue in the forums but I believe that it would worthwhile to consolidate resources for women applicants specifically just like other resources are consolidated.

bb · Answer

Thank you! We do have some resources for Women pursuing MBA: calling-all-female-mba-applicants-84636.html Not sure about minority, but will take a look

bb · Answer

I will also add the Resume into the MBA section.

Anyone has drastic suggestions?

Spoilt · Answer

Hi bb,

I have a suggestion. We can reduce the menu size and make it simple.

e.g. Display the submenu under the menu dropdown with arrow as shown in draft image. This will reduce the menu size and make sections more logical/readable.

This type of menu are used on many sites. I hope I am clear.

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Menudesign.JPG [ 41.71 KiB | Viewed 3500 times ]

bb · Answer

Thank you. Appreciate the suggestion.
My thought was that the menu was acceptable length - do I understand it correctly that you feel a shorter menu will be more valuable?

Spoilt · Answer

Yes. I certainly believe that menu is large in size.

Sub section seperation with "-" doesn't looks good. Instead we can use a seperate mechanism to display sub menu on side once we take mouse over them.

perseverance · Answer

I'm unsure if the Resources tab is even needed at all. All of the options can be categorized into the GMAT or MBA tabs. When I first started on this site, it took me at least a few days to discover the other GMAT 'tools' listed under the Resources tab. Maybe some consolidation is in order?

Just a suggestion.

Just a suggestion.

bb · Answer

Thank you - great feedback. I agree.

Do you think we need anything else other than  GMAT  &  MBA  Tabs?

Do we want to add any other tabs. Options include: Admissions Consultants, Savings/Offers from GMAT Prep companies,  best posts  (based on kudos), anything else???

bb · Answer

And of course, Kudos Spoilt and Perseverance.

perseverance · Answer

Appreciate the kudos bb. Maybe we can group things together under the GMAT and MBA tabs. Sort of like what Spoilt suggested. We can have groups such as the ones below and then have subgroups to the actual links for the threads.

GMAT 
 Starting your GMAT Journey:  Building your study plan; GMAT FAQ; GMAT Scoring; GMAT Myths; Error Logs
 GMAT Materials:  Book Reviews
 GMAT Courses
Math Tips
Verbal Tips
AWA 
Practice CATs
GMAT Club GMAT Resources:  GMAT Club Tests; Score Estimator; Timer; iPhone Apps

MBA 
 Starting your Application Journey
US Programs:  Full Time (Stats/Rankings); Part Time (Stats/Rankings)
 International Programs:  Rankings/Stats
 Profile Evaluations
Application Tips:  Getting noticed/Standing out; Essays; Resumes; Interviews
 GMAT Club MBA Resources:  Pre-MBA Book List; School Map; iPhone Apps

This is just a quick rough layout for how to structure the tabs. I'm probably missing something, so let's all add things as we think of them.

perseverance · Answer

Hey bb,
The new navigation menu came out great. Although I've been a member for a few months now, I still have a newbie-type question. Is there a way to get to forums such as Business School Life and the Career forum from the navigation menu? I always seem to go to the MBA-US Schools link (from the nav menu) and then backtrack from there.

Thanks.

bb · Answer

Thank you for the question and noticing the change - we are trying to figure out if this is better.
What you described is the best way right now. You can also just go to the forum index page and from there hit the subforums you are interested in.

scorpionz · Answer

I had a suggestion for the Navigation bar...Bumping an old thread rather than starting a new one.

Can we have something like a "Favorites" tab on the Navigation Bar? Every registered user will have the ability to add any post, topic or forum to his/her Favorites. It's something analogous to the Favorites functionality we have within web-browsers.

If it is not too difficult to implement, we can additionally have three options dropping down
a. Posts
b. Topics
c. Forums
Rolling the mouse over any of the three will further open up a list of all items stored within that..(something similar to how in Windows we have Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Word etc.)

I guess it goes without saying that this tab should be displayed for members currently logged in and not displayed for guests.

The reasons for having such a tab are -

1. Easier navigation - I guess most of the users routinely access certain topics while don't really visit other topics. Personally, I would list all the "Calling XYZ School" topics for the schools I'm applying to to my Favorites. Right now, one has to go through the forum index to navigate to the topic of choice. While I do like to see all topics in a forum when I have some time, I would really like the option of going to a specific topic directly when I'm in a rush (like at present, I'm checking out the Booth thread pretty frequently to check for updates on interview invites)..

2. There are some seriously awesome posts by folks such as Rhyme, Praetorian, Pelihu (to name a few) which I have come across. Now, when I need to go back to these posts, I have dig them up from the mountain of posts we have using the correct search keywords. This is time consuming. If I had the option, I would put all such posts into my "Favorites" tab so that I can reference them whenever I want.

I believe there isn't a similar functionality at present on the site. If there is, I would be happy if anyone could point it out..

Thoughts????

bb · Answer

Thank you for the suggestion and Kudos for finding this thread - not an easy task!

I agree. It should be done. 
Right now we have a "bookmarks" functionality on the forum but I bet nobody knows how to use it or how to find their bookmarks after saving one.

Let me research this real quick.

scorpionz · Answer

Thanks for the kudos bb!

I did try to use the bookmarks functionality and yeah, you're right, I couldn't figure out where my bookmark was saved!

Let us know more on this whenever you get a chance...

bb · Answer

I have submitted the request to our server admin to code this. I don't know the execution time frame yet however. I would guess no more than a month and most likely shorter than that (there are a few other tasks on the plate).

One suggestion I am looking for, is where to place the Bookmark button. What is a good spot?
Should this be linked to Kudos perhaps? If you bookmark a post a user automatically gets Kudos?
Should we display (i.e. Facebook likes) as to how many "bookmarks" each post has?

scorpionz · Answer

I think it should either be the last item on the navigation bar (after Blog) or it should be the third item (between Forum & Self Prep). These two seem to be the most logical locations to me. We can check with a larger population on GC for their views on this.. This is a great idea! I hadn't thought about this at all. And it would make perfect sense - why would someone bookmark a post that is not helpful, and if it is helpful, it rightfully deserves kudos! Plus, with the new functionality of ordering posts by kudos, the most bookmarked posts will automatically rise to the top when sorted by kudos! Awesome! Sounds good! Am not sure about this one. I believe you mean something like "Bookmarked XXX times", right? I feel that we don't need this if we are going to link Bookmarks to Kudos. However, if we aren't going to do that, then this will seem more relevant... Also, can you tell us a little bit about how Bookmarks will be implemented? Will users have the ability to bookmark individual posts only or topics & forums as well (as I had illustrated in my earlier post) ? Once again, thanks for taking up this initiative!! You truly make GC a better place everyday!

Help us improve our navigation menu - make a difference!

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