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What is the role of effective navigation in web design?
The most important aspects of good navigation pattern for your web design is
listed here. If you get your navigation wrong, you are certain to loose web site
visitors.
The 5 Principles of Effective Navigation.
A website's navigation is one of its most important parts. Sure, your users
mostly come in through search engines now instead of via your homepage, but how
can they get from whatever page they're on to any other page they might want to
go to? The limited space available at the top and sides of most web pages (at
least when compared to the amount of content many contain) makes good navigation
design difficult, but vital. Here, then, are five principles of effective
navigation.
1. Don't Be Original.
What? Don't be original? What kind of advice is that? Well, if you spend any
time visiting sites on the web, you should realize that it's better advice than
it might sound.
Let's say you've just landed at some website for a search. You read a bit,
you're interested, but you'd like to know more about what this website is and
why it's here – basically, can you trust it? If you're anything like me, you
look around for a navigation link called 'about', 'about us', or something
similar. Calling this link something else – 'philosophy', for example – will
only confuse your visitors, and make them less able to find what they're looking
for. However much you might dislike the conventions of the web, you have to
accept that we're stuck with them at this point, at least if you want your
website to be as usable as it can be.
2. Clicking the Logo Always Goes Home.
As a corollary to the above advice, it is extremely important to make sure that
clicking your website's logo will take a visitor back to your home page. I
recently visited a website where clicking their logo caused a pop-up window to
open, describing the logo. Do they really think that was what I wanted? Why on
earth would anyone click on the logo to learn about it? That kind of thing is
just bad navigation design.
People treat the logo-home link as a lifeline in the same way that they do the
Back button: you break it at your peril.
3. Always Include Search.
Often, visitors can't be bothered to search through your menu systems for what
they're looking for, especially if you have a large website. This fact makes it
all the more important that you provide a search box right there on the
navigation bar. No, not a link that says 'search' – an actual input box where
your visitors can type, with a button next to it labeled 'Search'.
So adding a 'search' button is imperative in your web design. It provides an
easier way for your visitors to find what they want quickly. So remember this
point when planning on your web design.
People have been to enough websites to know what to do with a box like that,
to the point where they even get upset if they can't find one. Oh, and make sure
that pressing the enter key after typing in the box takes them to the search
results page.
It's best to keep your web design simple and nice looking. Keep the 'search'
button somewhere that can easily be located. Remember this too in your we design
strategies.
A 'search' button is not required in your web design if you thinking of a small web site with few pages. But it must be a part of your web design plans if you are into a large web site.
4. Highlight on Hover.
When someone is hovering over part of your navigation system, you need to
highlight the option they've got selected, so that they know where they are.
Every non-web navigation system you've ever used no doubt does this, so there's
no reason why websites shouldn't. You don't want your visitors to be guessing
what their clicks are about to do – you want them to be absolutely certain.
This principle is even more important in navigation that has more than one level
(that is, where you can follow an arrow to get to a sub-menu). You've got to
keep both the name of the sub-menu and the selected item on the sub-menu
highlighted: if you don't, visitors are likely to forget which sub-menu they
selected, or not realize that they accidentally selected the wrong one.
5. Use Breadcrumbs.
Bread crumbs is colloquial term used in web design while talking of navigation.
Actually, this is an easy way for the visitor to reach section on your website
and most large sites incorporate this web design pattern.
Usually bread crumbs are found at the top of the web page in an ordinary web
design. This is because the human eyes reaches the top first and then scrolls
down for more information.
Finally what are bread crumbs? If you have pages nested deeply in a
navigation hierarchy, make sure you offer 'breadcrumbs' to let visitors know
where they've come from. For example, a set of breadcrumbs for this article
might look like this:
Articles > Web Design > Navigation > The 5 Principles of Effective Navigation
In this case, clicking on 'Articles', 'Web Design' or 'Navigation' would take
you to indexes for those categories, containing sub-categories and perhaps more
articles. For examples of breadcrumb navigation in action, take a look at the
big search directories like dmoz.org and yahoo.com.
We hope you enjoyed this navigation article on web design. There are still more
articles on web design on this site. Enjoy them!
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