Navigation for a webpage should be like a road map, where you can decide how to reach a place where you had never been before without getting lost. It plan should be clear, simple and well defined before even designing a website layout. The first thing that you should keep in mind that visitor has come to your webpages to search information and you must ensure that potential customers are able to find the information they are looking for without too many clicks. Beware never make your visitors hunt for navigation, they are not interested in a solving navigation mistery on your site always wondering where to go next, A simple single click should lead visitors to where you want them to go.
As a quick thumb rule decide upon the information you are going to put for a visitor on your webpage, determine the structure tree before you sit on for designing, let information requirement dictate your design and not the other way round. This will help in creating good navigation system which will determine as to what type of navigation tier the visitor is going to need, and appreciably when (content context), this determines where the most effective navigation control placement will be, hence your design evolves around the requirement.
I normally recommend for my freelance web designs that a visitors browsing your site should be able to get his information, at most within three clicks from the homepage. This also becomes of vital importance when considering for search engine optimization (SEO). The reason being that search engines lady is preety shy and will only spider pages no more than 3 clicks deep into your site from your homepage. In other word the website navigation system is to be designed for the two prospective visitors the users who come to find information they are looking for, and the lady spider from search engines to index the information they are looking for and obviously both are prime concern to us. This is essential factor for high quality search engine traffic directed to your website.
For designing effective navigation for the webpages, we need to divide the navigation hierarchy that we analysed based on the content and information to be presented into two sub parts. The global global navigation system which need to be kept consistent across all the pages of a website, they may find their placement on the top menu bar or on top left hand as well as sometimes on top right hand side. The second type is the contextual navigation which generally forms the second tier of navigation system, they may be a detailed or specific information page within the former primary global page. The decision to include is primarily targetted consequent upon visitors anticipation, you need to answer your inner question as to what you would have done when you would be reading your content. You have a question in your mind then give the answer right there and let the visitor have confidence in you.
In conjunction with the two tier navigation control you could also work up on spotlight navigation where you want to arouse a curiosity of the visitor and lead him to a specific page may be prompt him to book order, indulge him in impulse purchases. Then the vital part of the webpage goes in the footer, normally I would again suggest that all the possible pages be linked to from footer of all pages or you could design depending on the page context and keep them a plain html links as far as possible. This has two advantages the visitors who is at the end of the page need not scroll up to go to another page of his interest and then you have already targetted the search engine for following the links if you have used a navigation control which search engine would find difficult to trace.
Last but not the least, construct a site map of the website, though this does not come under the category of navigation menu, but definately form as part of navigation control. The page should give bird eye view of your complete website and believe me the lady spider really loves this page.
Menu Systems
Left hand side menu: This forms the most widely used menu system, using images, text links using .css or list menus. These menus are useful for small to medium sized webpages generally having single tier menu system.
Right hand side menus: This is similar to the left hand menu but some designer prefer to have the menu on the right hand side to match the design.
DHTM or Javascript Menu : These are javascript generated menus having first tier main page topics running horizontally across the top of the page. When a user hovers over the main menu a drop box with second tier menu options drops down. This system is used when we have a medium to big website, it has advantage that it's easy to add new pages since we only need to create the page then add the text links to the scripts.
Flash based spotlight menus.
Footer based menus, though not a complete navigation control in itself but majrity of times it saves vistors from scrolling upwards and getting frustated.
To sum up, a navigation control system for a web page should be simple, clear and extempore, It should have capability of expansion with your website. Every other page should have back link to the home page. Use short and clear page title as well as page header to let visitor determine where they presently are. Use the hierarchy and contextual links where ever necessary.
Chanda Dobriyal
Freelance Web Designer - Dristi Web Solutions |
