Website Navigation Tips
Website navigation is the most important to consider while designing a website. The primary aim is get your visitors to stay in your site and also easily find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
Navigation Guidelines
Organized Links
Make sure your links are well organized according to the order of importance. Visitors should be easily able to find what they are looking for under different categories.
DHTML Menus
If you have a large number of links under categories and sub-categories you could use navigation menus to organize your links. In internet there are many scripts available, so that you could use to create great navigation systems.
Consistent
Navigation should be clear and consistent. The important links of your site should be on same location in every page. Don't confuse the visitors by putting your navigation links in different pages in different places.
Clear and Prominent
Once you have decided on your navigation links, you need to think of the best place to put them. Navigation should be clear and consistent. Avoid putting navigation links at the bottom of the page as visitors will need to scroll right down to see the links. If you like you could put the important links at the top and bottom of the page just to make sure your visitors don't miss the link.
Easy to understand
Make your links easy to understand. Visitors need to know where they will go on clicking on a particular link, so make sure your links are understandable.
Another good idea would be to use eye-catching visuals and small of information to draw visitors to click on a link.
Important tips for good website navigation
- Always links the logo on a web site to the homepage.
- Do not have the navigation system placed horizontally on one page and vertically on the left in another. An exception to this rule can be the homepage which can differ from all other pages.
- Place navigation system on the left or the top (just below the header).
- A good site map and navigation menu on a web site will cut down the number of clicks required to move from one page to another.
- Be sure to have a link called "Home", "Homepage" or equivalent in the web site navigation menu. Ideally a web site navigation menu consists of links to the homepage, "About Us", "Contact us", "Site Map" and other important pages of the web site
The following list shows some basic web site navigation schemes:
- Text links
- Graphic images - navigation buttons
- Graphic images - image maps
- Drop-down Menus - Javascript, CGI, etc.
- Dynamically generated URLs
