Websites and apps are semantic artifacts: they’re peppered with words and icons that tell you what you’ll find and do there. Designing these systems requires choosing appropriate terms.

Words and icons in menus let you move around. But they also create particular contexts. Consider a website that offers the following options in their primary nav:

  • Checking Accounts
  • Savings Accounts
  • Credit Cards
  • Loans
  • Support

Just by reading those words, you know you’re at a bank. Your previous experiences with banks raise expectations about what to find and do there. So from a structural perspective, language plays two roles here:

  1. It allows people to move around.
  2. It creates a model that bounds the system to a particular subject domain.

Fulfilling both roles requires selecting words with care. Terms must reflect the content and tasks offered by the system while being clear to users.

I said “structural perspective” because I’m not talking about all the text in the system. Websites and apps include lots of non-structural text in page copy and such. By structural elements, I mean

  1. options in menus and navigation bars,
  2. taxonomy terms (which are exposed via faceted filters and such,) and
  3. section headings.

The last of these inhabit a gray zone between content and structure, since they often show up amidst (or above) longer blocks of text. But they’re important to consider when structuring language.

When reading online, people scan for stuff they might be interested in. When something catches their attention, then they read. That “something” is often a section heading.

In any case, whether it’s a section heading, navigation option, or a taxonomy term, picking the right words (or icons) is critical. Here are a few pointers to help you select the right terms:

  • Consider words to be parts of a system. Whether it’s a navigation bar or a dropdown list of options, people experience structural terms in sets. Design them as such. Use similar levels of abstraction, conjugations, length, etc.
  • Make options easy to scan. Start phrases with words that differentiate them. For example, Checking Accounts and Savings Accounts share the word Accounts but both start with the terms that differentiate them.
  • Avoid ambiguity. Sometimes, two terms can sound similar. For example, a banking website might have checking accounts and user accounts — two very different uses of “account.” Resolve this ambiguity by picking synonyms. (E.b., “user profile” rather than “user account.”)
  • Avoid jargon. Unless you’re designing for a specialized audience, avoid using obscure words in your global structures. Be especially careful with marketing terms in navigation bars. (AKA “mystery meat navigation.”)
  • Test terminology. There are methodologies for testing whether users understand your selected terms. Tree tests can be particularly effective for identifying terms that aren’t working.
  • Clear > clever. Resist the temptation to introduce wordplay or other clever uses of language. When in doubt, opt for simpler, shorter, more straightforward terms.
  • Do the research. Picking the right terms comes down to understanding your system’s content and its intended users. Knowing what words and phrases resonate with users helps you create more understandable options.

However you do it, take care when naming global structural elements. Remember: structural terms never stand alone. They work in sets that create contexts — and contexts can shift the meaning of terms.

Honing language for a website or app requires zooming up and down levels of abstraction. Sometimes, you work on sets of terms, and sometimes you consider them individually.

These words and phrases (and icons) — and sets of the same — influence how people use and perceive your system. They’re strategically important; select them with care.