Improve site navigation
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Site navigation must be simple and clear. Clear navigation is one of the most
important parts of effective website. Websites with a good navigation structure
are easy to use for potential visitors and are easy to index with search engine
spider, what means your site get a better search engine placement .
Here are some usefull tips on how
to improve your website navigationYour link titles need to be understandable. Your visitors
need to know exactly what about is a link to click on.
Improve your web site navigation menus to 5-10 options or less. That's
the max amount you can have without losing your custommers concentration.
Create site map. Global web site navigation is an absolute
necessity. It ensures that visitors can always get to the main sections of
your website
quickly and easily. Global navigation options must be the same on every webpage.
Creating site map is verry helpfull to improve search engine ranking.
Give your main navigation good placement at the top or left of the
page. When visitors arrive at your webpage, they scan in an orderly
pattern from left to right, starting in the top left corner and working down
the
page. So if your web site navigation is at the top or on the left, it's going
to be seen quickly.
Don't move and change style of links around from page to page. Link
colors, fonts, button styles and link placement should be the same
throughout the website. The goal should be for visitors to instantly recognize
a link when they see it.
A very common technique to improve site navigation is to place web site navigation
options on a colored
field, on a horizontal bar or a sidebar. This is effective because
it creates a strong contrast with other elements on the webpage.
On every page of your website, you'll have to anticipate the questions a
visitor is going to have. Figure out what kind of additional information
they might need. Then provide navigation links to that information
at the precise place that they will have the question. One good rule is that
any
time
you refer
to information on another page of your site or on a third party's site, link
directly to that info.
If you use a web site navigation scheme that's completely different from
what you see on most other sites, visitors will likely be confused. Make
your web site navigation look and function like something visitors will be
familiar with
from other sites.
Give it space. If your web site navigation has a lot of
clutter around it, it stands a smaller chance of getting noticed. In a busy
situation,
people do not notice detail. So be sure to leave plenty of space around your
web site navigation.
Separate it from ads. If want your web site navigation to
be noticed, keep it away from ads. People on the web are highly suceptible
to "banner
blindness". That's a real condition in which people ignore anything that
is associated with an ad. So keep ads and web site navigation physically separated.
Make sure that your web site navigation
doesn't look like an ad.
Square or rectangular buttons and images at the top and sides of the page are
especially problematic.
Improve bottom-of-the-page navigation. If possible, you
should try to decide on 1-5 places that the visitor is most likely to want
to go next
and then guide them in that direction. Always make sure there is at least
one link at the bottom of a page. This is
a critical moment, because it is terribly easy for a visitor to leave if you
don't give them somewhere to go. It is your responsibility to point them in
the right direction. Never leave visitors without suggestions at the bottom
of a page.
Leave web site navigation linx blue. The combination of
blue and underlines means that is a clickable hyperlink. We're conditioned
to recognize
those distinguishing
characteristics. There's no time wasted in trying to figure out whether or
not that particular
word or phrase is clickable. If you mess with the natural appearance of a link,
you lose that instant recognition. People have to stop and think to figure
out what your colors mean.
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