Good Web Design - Why Navigation Matters

Efficient navigation is a key element in effective web design.

Navigation is the hand-holder of your website visitor. It's the guide that leads the visitor around your site. The navigator can either be helpful and quick-witted or a dummy that gets everybody lost and frustrated. Or anything in between.

Here are some things to remember as you consider appropriate navigation for your site.

Avoid industry slang in your site navigation.

Keep in mind, the navigation’s not for your level of understanding; it’s for your prospective customer’s level of understanding.

Use familiar page names in your site navigation.

Make sure your customer’s expectations are met when it comes to page names. The goal is to give your visitor an easy way to navigate around your website. Use common names like: Contact, About Us, Products, etc.

Be brief.

Summarize in a couple of words what your visitor will find. You don’t have much room and your visitor doesn’t have much time. Be as concise as possible.

Provide dropdown menus.

Make it easy on your visitor; provide dropdowns for pages with subpages. This allows the visitor to quickly scan content without having to click through multiple pages.

Make every menu item click-friendly.

Make sure every item in your navigation is clickable. Don’t force your visitor to jump through hoops to get to the page they want.

Be sure your logo clicks to ‘home’.

This may be obvious, but bears repeating. Always let your logo take your visitor back to your home page. Your visitor will expect it.

Splash’s website designers know how to create top-notch websites. Contact us today!