Good Navigation For Your Website
http://www.iwebdevs.net/articles/826/1/Good-Navigation-For-Your-Website/Page1.html
Matthew McKernan
Click on the links provided for more information on website design, search engine optimization and website development. By Matthew McKernan
Published on 10/6/2009
There are some things to consider when you are developing your website. On very important thing to think about is how easy it is for your customers to navigate your site. You want a site that is easy to go from page to page.
There are some things to consider when you are developing your website. On very important thing to think about is how easy it is for your customers to navigate your site. You want a site that is easy to go from page to page. If your customers come to your site then click on some of your other pages then try to back to the home page and it is too complicated then they will just get frustrated and leave.
They should be able to get from page to page with little thought. In today's times no one has the time to sit there and figure out how your site works. People are just way to busy for that. So in the design process of your site this should be one of the things that you will want to take into put some thought into. A very effective way to do this is to have menu options at the top of your site that will be permanent on all of your pages.
This would be the basics for example home, about us, the page that has your products on it everyone names this page differently, contact us page. Now you can put this menu bar on the sides of your site or at the top. It doesn't matter where you put it as long as it easy for your customers to find. You can have it be a pull down menu that links to all of your sub pages or you can just have it so that they go to those specific pages. Those are the more commonly visited pages.
Another way that you can do this is with breadcrumbs. Have you ever been to a site and right in the right hand corner it will say Home- About Us- Products? That is what breadcrumbs are. These words will be links. It leaves a trail of the pages that your customers have visited. This way they can easily get back to the previous pages if they need to. All they will have to do is either click on the word 'home' and it will bring them to the home page.
This is just two ideas that you can use to make your site easier to use. It doesn't matter if you are developing the site on your own or having a company do it for you. If you are having it done by a company then just because they send you site that may look cool doesn't make it user friendly.
They should be able to get from page to page with little thought. In today's times no one has the time to sit there and figure out how your site works. People are just way to busy for that. So in the design process of your site this should be one of the things that you will want to take into put some thought into. A very effective way to do this is to have menu options at the top of your site that will be permanent on all of your pages.
This would be the basics for example home, about us, the page that has your products on it everyone names this page differently, contact us page. Now you can put this menu bar on the sides of your site or at the top. It doesn't matter where you put it as long as it easy for your customers to find. You can have it be a pull down menu that links to all of your sub pages or you can just have it so that they go to those specific pages. Those are the more commonly visited pages.
Another way that you can do this is with breadcrumbs. Have you ever been to a site and right in the right hand corner it will say Home- About Us- Products? That is what breadcrumbs are. These words will be links. It leaves a trail of the pages that your customers have visited. This way they can easily get back to the previous pages if they need to. All they will have to do is either click on the word 'home' and it will bring them to the home page.
This is just two ideas that you can use to make your site easier to use. It doesn't matter if you are developing the site on your own or having a company do it for you. If you are having it done by a company then just because they send you site that may look cool doesn't make it user friendly.