A few navigation tips

A difficult-to-understand navigation system can be compared to reading a map in the dark. A lot of people who are novice to the web industry and web design in particular fail to create an effective website navigation system. Let me just say it would be really boldly to hope that Internet users would browse your site without clear and easy navigation system. Would you be able to drive a road with all the lights out? Obviously, not. The same rule can be applied to your potential customers. They would find it less burdensome to leave your site and move to the one that is easily navigable and understandable.

A website with a good and easy-to-use navigation system will boost your sales, that’s for sure, and it’s not that complex to do. In this article I’d like to reveal a few basic tips to help you to create an effective navigation system that will easily guide your customers to the products they’ve been searching for.

• Navigation bar. Navigation bar is literally a menu with links that appears on each web page of the website. Those links tell the customers about the web pages which they should visit on your site. The names of the links have to be short, speaking and clear so that your visitors don’t get confused to where they will go. If you can, use keywords in the links of your navigation bar. By doing so, you can greatly improve website visibility on the web. Don’t make your navigation bar too long.

• A sitemap. A sitemap is a “must thing” for every website. It’s a separate and organized page with the links to every web page in the website that makes it easier for customers to navigate the site and for the search engines to access the information. The main goal of any website is to have all its pages indexed in the search engines so that the site can achieve higher rankings on the Internet.

• Repeat links. Now you know that it’s important to have a navigation bar on the site, but to repeatedly use the same links in various areas is just equally important. By repeating the important links at the bottom of each page will help your customers to see the entire page without necessity to scroll up to the top of navigation links.

• Titles and Headers. If your customer gets ever confused to where he is on your website, you will more than likely missed the boat to get a sale. Page titles and subject headers is an effective way to show the customers what pages they are visiting. The font used for headers should be bold and larger than the one used for page content. By doing so, you will help both, your potential customers and the search engines to navigate through your website.

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• Design tips: website usability checklist
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• Different types of website navigation
• Make your navigation visible on the website