Website Design : Navigation Basics
By Mark Walters
The easier your website is to navigate, the longer people will stay on it, and the longer they do so, the more likely it is that they will do what you want them to do, such as give their personal details or buy something. Consequently, considering how visitors will navigate your site is a very important aspect of website design.
Your general objective in relation to the navigation of your website should be for visitors to it to be able to find what they want with as few mouse clicks as possible. Put plainly, the smaller the number of clicks required by a visitor to find what they are looking for, the better your website navigation is. The more times visitors click without finding whatever it is that they are looking for, the more chance there is that the next click will be the one on the close window icon.
A link is a word or phrase that when clicked takes visitors from one part of your website to another part of your website, and knowing how to make use of them as part of your website design is essential. The more pages you have on your website, the more links you will need. If your website has 5 pages, then you will probably need around 20 links. If your website has 100+ pages, then you will probably need 300+ links.
In theory, every page on your website should link to every other page on your website, as that would mean that visitors only have to click once to find the information that they are looking for. However, if your website has many pages, then this will not be possible, as you would have so many links filling up your pages that there would be little space left for anything else. What you should try and do though is have every page that is directly relevant to another page to include a link to it.
In addition to having links within, and at the bottom of, your written content, it is also advisable to incorporate menu bars along the top and / or left hand side of your website design. You can include many links within a menu bar without them getting in the way of your written content or cluttering up the look and feel of your website. This is the perfect place to put links that are not directly relevant to the web page that a visitor is viewing, and avoid the need for visitors to have to consistently return to your homepage.
About The Author
This article was written by a website design expert who has more than 10 years experience in the industry. He is currently doing website design in Scarsdale, NY and can be contacted at http://kinneymedia.com