6 tips for better Website Navigation

Everyone must have seen many Web Designers and laymen concentrating more on website's looks and other fancy items at the expense of navigation. In such cases navigation is never discussed or given a thought. What is forgotten is that an easy navigation is one of the most important qualities of a good interactive website. After all, a website has to be used by people if they can't find what they need. Here are six tips to ensure that your next website has an easy to use navigation system.


1) Organization: Before designing a website, determine the organization of the website, where links should be placed and how the content should be laid out etc. This step is as important as designing the website.


2) Minimize Clicks: Design the navigation so that the site visitor needs to make as few clicks as possible to get to the information. If the visitor wants to shop, let him to do it in least possible number of steps. If he wants to see the content, then it should be available to him easily. A webpage should have at least 400 words. If it's less than that then combine that page with another short page.


If a visitor cannot find the information, he may get annoyed or even leave the site for another website that has a user friendly navigation system.


3) Ensure Optimum Page Length: Though, unnecessary pagination should be avoided to minimize clicking, making too long pages should also be avoided. Avoid putting too much info on one page. Generally, a page should have at most 2 screenfuls of the information. Too much scrolling is bad as too much clicking.


4) Link to Home Page on Every Page: Allow visitors to get back to home page whenever they want. Sometimes visitors stray off and including a link to home page helps them get back to where they started. A clickable logo which links to home page should also be included. Do not bank on "Back" button of the browser.


5) Menu on all Pages: A menu should be on every page so that the user has the choice to see any page s/he wishes to. Nothing irritates a visitor more than landing on a page with a dead end. Include menus on every page. Apart from the regular menu, footer should also have navigation elements. After the visitor has scrolled down, s/he may not want to go back to top for menu.


6) Avoid Frames: Many web designers like using frames because they make it easy to have same header and navigation menus on all pages. But they are not recommended because of couple of reasons. When you use frames, then the address bar doesn't change which means that you can bookmark or share a specific page. If a visitor gets to a webpage after finding it in search engine and that page is not a frameset than the visitor will see a page without surrounding frame with menus.


Author: Aniruddha Badola