Sun 10 Dec 2006
As a professional webdesigner you should always make your visitor to move smoothly through your site. They should be aware of where they are and where they can go.Your website should be flexible. You can achieve this by implementing proper navigation scheme for yor site.
Your navigation can be considered as a road map for your site. If your site is poorly built for navigation then there are much chances of loosing visitor, if they get lost in your site.
Tips for Web site navigation :
Title: All navigation links should have a short and descriptive title making it easy for the user to understand where it links.
Importance : The primary navigation should not have more than 6-7 links. Keep only the most important links in the primary navigation and leave the rest for the secondary navigation.
Uniqueness : Always try to make your primary navigation links more unique by using some graphics or different links style.
Alternative link : If using graphics or javascript links, a text alternative should be available. Some people might have the graphics turned off or javascript disabled when browsing the Internet. In such cases an alternate option should be available.You can have a text menu and the bottom of the page could be included.
Keep it minimum: On every page there should be a reasonable number of links. Pages with 20-30 links are harder to use than pages with 10 links. Visitors don’t have the time to click on all of them to see if they are interested in the information secluded behind them. The best approach is group similar links in categories and let people discover them click upon click.
5 Responses to “Tips for better navigation”
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December 11th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
Well, also I think enabling bookmarking button such as ( delicious, furl, fark, etc) would increase number of repeat visitors.
December 11th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Make sure your navigation don’t force visitor to click many time to get a specific page. ie it should not be of redundant type.
Multiple clicks may irritate users.
Always try to provide a link by which they can get back to homepage.
December 12th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
If you follow the W3C standard it will help you to improve the quality of your web pages and navigation.
December 12th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
A website’s navigation must be well constructed, easy to use and consistent as it is the pathway people take to browse through a website. Poor navigation won’t help users and your site can prove to be less accessible.
Another important thing to keep in mind is users should be able to find information they are looking for easily with the help of site navigation.
December 19th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
This is very sound advice indeed. I use the two row menu style for one of my sites, which I plan to use across all site eventually. The top menu is the same for all pages, and the lower menu unique for each section / page. This seems to improve navigation to some extent, as i noticed an increased depth of visit / pages per visit after initiating this.
Example in action is at tranquillizer.co.uk
Cheers,
Jon.