Everyone knows that for your website to do its job it has to be visited and then browsed: a simple concept but one that some web designers occasionally seem to forget when they get into their creative stride. An all singing all dancing masterpiece of a website is great but still only as good as its ease of navigation, because if visitors don’t know where they are they will no longer notice the creativity they’ll simply leave.
New Here?
First-time visitors to your website will be in unfamiliar territory and need clear signposts to show them where to go, so clearly defined page links are essential and importantly, link directly to the page they’re meant to. Sending them somewhere else will only leave them dazed and confused, not to mention frustrated.
Back the Way They Came
Pages with no navigation usually mean having to use the back button to return to the previous page. Back buttons are quite simply a pain in the proverbial. They do two things and two things only – go back to the previous page and annoy the hell out of visitors. They are best avoided by ensuring every page on the site has a basic navigation menu.
I Name This Page…!
Naming your tabs should be quite straightforward, but some site owners try to be too clever with words by titling them with off-the-wall labels or cryptic headings. It rarely works – visitors don’t want to solve clues, they want clear page headings that tell them exactly where they’re going.
Multiple Choices
Understandably, some larger and perhaps more complicated websites require much more than a simple navigation menu and obviously that can’t be avoided. On these sites, drop-down boxes are generally the preferred method of extending the menu, but getting around the site should still be made an easy process, so all the previous points are still applicable.
Easy Does It
Web designers are by nature extremely creative, and often produce sites that leave us mere mortals open-mouthed in awe, but perhaps the true website experts and best qualified critics are the users themselves – they know what constitutes a good site, and no matter how technically brilliant and advanced a site is, navigation should always be a simple affair.
Until next time.
