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Website Navigation Tips
Website navigation is the most important aspect to consider
while designing a website. The primary aim for effective
navigation is get your visitors to stay in you site and also for
visitors to easily find what they are looking for easily and
quickly. Designing effective navigation can also entice your
visitors to try out the other things you offer on your site. In
this article we will look at some of the basic guidelines you
need to follow while designing the navigation of a website.
Effective Navigation Guidelines
While designing the navigation for your site keep the
following points in mind:
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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.
E.g. All our main links are found on the top i.e. our
services, products,
portfolio, resources etc.
Other interesting links are found on the right of the page.
These are common and consistent throughout the site.
Finally if the web page belongs to a guide E.g web design
guide you will find the related links below the right menu and
also at the bottom of the page.
Note: Related links are very important as visitors coming to a
particular page will probably be interested in more
information you have under the same topic.
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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. Try to design your navigation on the top
or on the left as these are the first places our eyes go to.
Also locate the primary links high enough on the page so that
they are visible without scrolling. Navigation images should
be seamlessly integrated into the site design. 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.
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Consistent
Navigation should be clear and consistent. The important links
of your website should be on every page, in the same location,
and in the same sequence. Don't confuse your visitors by
putting your navigation links in different places in different
pages.
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Easy to understand
Make your links easy to understand and to the point. Usually
you won't have enough place to have long links so make use of
the space wisely. Visitors need to know where they will go on
clicking on a particular link, so make sure your links are
understandable or nobody is going to click on your links,
which will defeat the purpose of designing a good navigation
system.
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DHTML Menus
If you have a large number of links under categories and
sub-categories you could use navigation menus to organize your
links. There are many cut 'n' paste scripts available on the
Net that you could use to create great navigation systems. A
favorite resource center is
SimplyTheBest.net, you'll find tons of useful navigation
menus that are very easy to install on your site.
Keeping these basic points in mind you can go ahead and
design an effective navigation system for your site. Take a look
at other sites to get some ideas on good navigation techniques!
Another good idea would be to use eye-catching visuals and small
chunks of information to draw visitors to click on a link E.g
the Smart Referrer and Flash Guest book seen on the right below
the menu.
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