Knowledge Base
Good Website Navigation
Web site navigation is the pathway people take to navigate through sites. It must be well constructed, easy to use and intuitive. Poor navigation does not help users and often the site can prove to be less accessible than others.
Good navigation is fundamental to good web design - in both business and informational sites - users should be able to find information easily. If the navigation is not easy to use or intuitive users will quickly go elsewhere in search of information. Navigation is the single most important element in creating accessible and usable web sites.
Key Points To Designing Navigation
- People can enter a site through any other page, not just the homepage. Using other pages as entry points is achieved through search engines, links from other web sites or bookmarks. Users must easily find their way around a web site from every and any page. They should be able to reach the homepage from any page within the web site. Reaching all major site sections can only help them see more of the provided information.
- This what people expect from good website navigation: primary navigation (most important links, categories etc), secondary navigation (secondary links, subcategories etc), position of navigation, link titles, number of links per page etc.
- The less clicks, the better. Visitors should be able to find the information they are looking for as quickly as possible.
Internal Linking
One important aspect of navigation is internal linking between the pages. One can place links to other pages within the site in the actual body text of the page. This can help users find related information quickly. Internal linking can also help search engine spiders to find their way to every single page. For example, if you are talking about text based browsers link the word browsers to a related page like a glossary for instance.
Placing a small set of links just below the text to related pages or resources is also a very successful way to interlink pages of similar interest.
Reasons Against Overly Modern Navigation>
When designing for users it is important to give them what they expect. Web designers should not confuse matters by using funky, intricate navigation no matter how cool it might be. Users do not like to be kept away from the information they are after. They do not have the patience or time to discover and learn navigation, it should be instinctive and instantly clickable. Complicated and difficult to use navigation makes users feel uneasy and apprehensive about a web site. They are likely to leave the site to go somewhere else where they feel welcome and where they can easily find what they are looking for.
Website Navigation Checklist
- Titles of navigation links should be short, descriptive and intuitive. Users should easily understand what every link leads to.
- The primary navigation should not have more than 6-7 links. Keep only the most important links in the primary navigation and leave the rest for the secondary navigation.
- Make the primary navigation stand out by using graphics or different links style.
- If using graphics or JavaScript links, a text alternative should be available. Some people might have the graphics turned off or JavaScript disabled when browsing the Internet. In such cases an alternate option should be available. To achieve this, a text menu and the bottom of the page could be included.
- On every page there should be a reasonable number of links. Pages with 20-30 links are harder to use than pages with 10 links. Visitors do not have the time to click on all of them to see if they are interested in the information secluded behind them. The best approach is group similar links in categories and let people discover them click upon click.
- Users should be able to tell at any time their whereabouts are in a web site. A crumbs type of menu such as the one on this page lets them know that they are in a subsection of the Accessible web design section.
- Colour links do not necessarily have to be standard but they should be able to tell if a link has been clicked before or not.