Best way to handle primary/secondary navigation

Question

I'm working on a site right now where I need to handle both primary and secondary navigation. Unfortunately, in this case the secondary navigation is more important than the primary...

Primary navigation would be the site components (about us, contact, home, etc...) and secondary in this case is a list of vacation styles (America, International, Local, etc...). You can checkout the site in question at http://www.sportsleisure.com. I'm looking for a way to handle both navigation components in a really easy to use way (the users of the site are mostly elderly).

Any ideas or input on the best way to get this done from a ui perspective?

Answer 1

So you've been able to identify the primary demographic of your website - why not observe their interactions with your site and get feedback from them? I mean, I can tell you that the site as-is is very cluttered. Your users, on the other hand, might provide behaviors to really tune in what you're trying to do.

I think what you may be looking for is a GUI solution - I think this is something that you can provide, you just need to know where to start. A good point would be with the people that are most commonly using your product, and what their expectations and experience is with it.

Answer 2

I would agree with you that the secondary navigation is much more important than the primary.

I think that you should remove the entire bar above the secondary navigation (the bar containing SL Travel Club, Travel Blog, Contact Us, Facebook, Radio Show), as it is quite distracting and not one of the first things that people would look for upon visiting the site.

It's hard to give any other suggestions without really knowing how visitors are using your website.