This article is about the tiniest of details that goes into creating the main centerpiece of your digital product—the construction of the elements of your navigation. This is the most important aid you can possibly give to your users as they are constantly seeking a reason to walk out on you.

In this article, we’ll review a few techniques that will help Web designers and UI professionals improve their error pages in order to engage visitors and improve the experience. As C.S. Lewis said, “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” Website designers should take this to heart.

We’ll focus on error and maintenance pages, from both a tracking and usability perspective. You’ll find examples on how to use analytics and defensive design in order to optimize the user experience on those pages.

Some interesting comments on hover menus and usability vs. click menus. With the explosion of mobile devices (which don’t have hover states) this may all be one level more relevant, too. The comments have an interesting discussion with a variety of points of view so be sure to read through them as well.

Many design­ers seem to believe that when their menus open on hover, they’re faster and eas­ier for most users to use. It cer­tainly might seem this way at first, but when you look deeper you’ll notice that the oppo­site is true. Hover menus are actu­ally slower and harder for most users to use. Menus that open on hover do save users a click, but that first click is nec­es­sary in let­ting the web­site know that the user wants a menu to open and is ready for it. It also con­firms to the user that some­thing is hap­pening as a result of their click. This behav­ior matches the user’s men­tal model of how most web­sites work. Click­ing for some­thing you want has never been an issue for users. What’s an issue for users is get­ting some­thing you don’t want or don’t expect sim­ply on hover…