Designing
a Good Navigation System for Your Website
By:
©Tim Gilligan
a/k/a/ "Skipper"
While
you should design your website to be aesthetically pleasing, beautiful
graphics and clever little details are no substitute for a good
navigation system.
No
matter how great your website looks, it will be useless if your
visitor can't find their way around your site.
Traditionally
the navigation menu is placed just below the header area or on
the left hand side of the web page. Usability studies have shown
that web site visitors instinctively look in these areas first.
Wherever
you decide to place your navigation menu, remember that consistency
is important.
The
most important thing is to place your navigation menu in the same
spot on every one of your web pages. If you use an image to represent
a navigational button, use the same image and the same color for
that image on each page of your website.
For
example, if you use an image of a green house in the left hand
corner of your web page as your "Home" navigational
link, use the same green house image in the left hand corner of
every one of your web pages to designate the "Home"
link.
Your
visitor should be able to find what they are looking for within
3 clicks of your home page. This is usually not a problem for
small sites. However, if you have a large site with many pages,
you will need to design a navigation menu that provides access
to all areas of your website without getting your visitor lost
or confused.
You
may want to use a bread crumb trail type of navigation system
for large sites (Homepage > Category > Subcategory >
Content).
Another
option is to use a dynamic menu that changes according to the
page your visitor is on, but be aware that search engines may
not be able to search sites using dynamic menus.
Usability
studies have shown that a navigation menu should contain no more
than 8 links. The more choices a user is given, the more difficult
it will be for them to make a decision.
Also,
if you have many links, your visitor may get the impression that
your site is complicated and difficult to navigate.
If
you have only a few links, use mouse rollovers to visually enhance
your website. You will need to add some Javascript that pre-loads
the rollover images and then add "onMouseover" events
to your image links. Alternatively, use CSS for text rollovers
that change the link color when the mouse cursor hovers over a
link.
Navigation
links should be considered the most important part of your website
for two reasons:
1)
They are used by your visitor to find content on your site.
2)
They are used by search engines to search your site.
The
reason users visit your site is to get information. If visitors
can't find the information they are searching for, they will click
away, perhaps never to return again.
While
different search engines have different rules on how they search
and rank a site, basically a "bot" will visit a site,
search for a "HREF" link and follow the links to other
pages, indexing the pages as it goes along.
If
the "bot" doesn't find a "HREF" tag on a page,
it is blocked from going any deeper into the site. As you can
see, you need to design your navigational system so that a search
engine can search all pages of your website.
When
designing your website, take the extra time to design a good navigational
system. It is vital to your success!
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About
the Author: Tim, or as everyone calls him, "Skipper",
is a successful online business entrepreneur who has been
working from home on the Internet since 1998. He is also
an award winning professional webmaster and graphic designer
with almost ten years experience to his credit. If you need
a website designed for your business or just need a little
re-working of your present website, just send him an e-mail
or call him on the phone for a free consultation. Just visit
his main website at: http://www.teejayenterprises.net
for information on how to contact the Skipper.
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