What is the problem we are trying to solve?
In the UK and increasingly in other countries, Tes has good brand recognition in education. But teachers’ recall of what Tes offers is very variable. Extremely few businesses have the variety of B2C and B2B product offerings as Tes does (presented with equal weighting).
How will the left nave help solve this?
On the desktop site, the new 3-column layout introduces an unchanging left navigation bar (AKA left nav, or "My Nav" the latter term is deprecated) for both logged in and logged out users, appearing on all pages across the site.
The primary purpose of this column is to “radiate” information about what Tes does (particularly for logged out users) in general. This is something that our single-word top/masthead navigation cannot do without requiring user interaction.
The secondary purpose of the left column is navigation to those things.
The reason navigation must be secondary is we need to protect this area from becoming overloaded with links which will be progressively ignored. What we put in this column should therefore be indicative (a clue, a "scent") of functionality and value, but not necessarily exhaustive. To achieve this, we will use labels in the left column designed to signpost broad areas of functionality, then use tabs in page to present related functions/areas within that.
How can we draw attention to high-value features if we don’t put them at the “top level” in the nav for all to see?
We will use more effective techniques to do this. Simply "making everything bold” isn’t mature or effective product design.
Specifically, we will use targeted, timely and persuasive techniques using our marketing muscles to introduce audiences to new product and features. For example, our on-boarding UX can work with email and alerting functions both on and off the site. We intend to combine this with business rules to highlight functions at the right time to the right people (eg 1 month since first visit, draw attention to resource uploading if they have not previously investigated that section of the site; 10 job searches performed but not used map view, call attention to this function, etc.)
What is the core guideline?
No one section of the left nav, both on desktop and mobile, should have more than 7 links. It will always be better to err on the side of over-consolidation for the sake of signposting rather than confusing existing users by changing the navigation in order to keep the number of links down later on.
What about mobile? We are mobile first. Teachers love mobile. I love mobile.
You're right. And because the left nav cannot appear on mobile (handsets) due to lack of space, a completely different design principle applies. Briefly: mobile is for directed, transient or non-contemplative use cases where achieving cross-linking to other parts of the site is not a realistic goal for us. Furthermore on native mobile, the issues of brand recognition and recall are modified due to the use cases that lead to people downloading apps to their phones.