id: 5
Category: Website Creation
Rated:
Navigation is something all sites need. It's how the visitor gets around from page to page. But often times people make it hard to find or just way to long...below are a few guide lines to keep in mind when setting up your navigation.
- - Is it too long? You want to keep the navigation somewhat short. It's annoying to have to scroll down a lot to find something.
- - You can make it shorter multiple ways. First of which is a drop down menu system. This allows a more compact navigation and depending on the location you pick, easy to find. Be careful though, they can be easy to mess up and don't work in all browsers at times. Make sure it works on all browsers before setting it up..
There is also an option where the user clicks the section they want to view and hiding the rest of the navigation. These are easy to use and work on most browsers, make sure though that it works with your web host.
Also, if you use something that people may have blocked in their browsers (java, flash) you may want an alternative way to do this
- - Make your links easy to find. Easy test, look at your navigation and if it takes over 5 seconds to find a link you want, its not organized enough or is way to long. Make sure you label things. For example all your graphic links (ex. Signs, avatars etc..) should be under a section labeled "Graphics" Another thing you can do is put the links under each section in alphabetical order.
- - Careful on the location of your navigation. Don't have it someplace where they can't find what they are looking for. An example: Don’t have it so all your graphics are on a page labeled "Visitor" and expect the person to find all the graphics etc...You need to clearly state "Graphics" and then have the links or however you want to do it.
- - If you have a link under the navigation that you can click on it better work. It's annoying to see a list of links and then clicking on them all to find out they aren't really there. If you intend on adding a page, then plain out have the link and cross it out,
