go.

I’m currently working on a site with some interesting needs, but I’m sure they aren’t unique. Specifically, the site has three separate audiences whose needs overlap almost not at all.

Audience 1 is by far the most important. Most of the site’s content will be focused on audience 1. Audiences 2 and 3 are less important and will be somewhat controlable. By that, I mean that they will arrive at an entry page chosen by my client the majority of the time. For these reasons I am considering making the site with no global navigation.

The homepage will feature the content relevant to audience 1 and links to the other sections will be in a column on the right. Every other page will include breadcrumb navigation and the company logo will link to the homepage. The only other navigation will be inline links where relevant (most of the content for audience 1 is interrelated).

A quick Google search for “no global navigation” returns many site evaluations condemning sites without global navigation. I only found two positive references to “no global navigation”. One of them reffered to itself as “an experiment”. The other was a refernce to Nielsen’s useit.com, which has a similar navigation scheme to the one described above. I don’t always agree with Nielsen, but in this case, I don’t mind the company.

I don’t see any advantage to having global navigation on this site, but I’m open to thoughts and advice. Anyone?