The Perfect Way to Navigate Your Website

Navigation of the web site assumes great significance as it bonds different pages of the site together. People surf the net for information or making some online transactions. They dislike the intricacies involved in the same. To keep visitors in your site, you should give them a pleasing experience.

Let us think of how we can introduce changes in the navigation architecture. Before planning navigation, think from the user’s perspective and begin. Generally, the first page of a web site will be the home page. Do not rely on that, as there is every possibility that they may reach one of those landing pages first. All the pages of your site should be connected to the home page. If that is the case, they can safely reach the home page for further exploration.

Confusion arises regarding the best place for navigation links. A heap of suggestions are there for the positioning of navigation links. Nevertheless, primary navigation should occupy an eye catching area (Usually top, left or right). The navigation text should be brief and self explanatory. Place the important menus in the primary navigation and less important ones in the secondary navigation or sub menus. Never attempt to sacrifice consistency for the sake of beautifying the web site. Design, layout and navigation pattern should maintain consistency throughout the web site. You can very well separate the following ones from the primary menu and place at the bottom of the page; i.e., contact us, about us, privacy policy, terms of use, sitemap, links and copyright.

Your idea should be to make the visitors reach the destination with the minimum number of clicks. Include the main menu in every page to enable smooth navigation. There is a bread-crumb trail approach in which the pages show the site structure in a hierarchical pattern. It will be valuable particularly when somebody reaches a landing page. A detailed site map and search feature facilitates both the visitors and search engines to explore the site in depth.

While you design the navigation, stick to the standard ones rather than being innovative. Visitors would like to see familiar designs and similar navigation patterns. When you place links in a page, ensure the quality and relevance of them. Another feature which will find use in long pages is page jump; it avoids extensive scrolling.

If you use graphics or java script for navigation links, place an alternate text in the HTML code, obviously including the key words, for search engines. Design should be permissive for the constant expansion of the web site.