How to design Good Web Site Navigation?

The navigation scheme you set up for your Web site acts as its road map, with clearly marked destinations, roads that intertwine, and even suggested routes.

You can have all kinds of great attractions on your site, but if your visitors don’t know how to get to them, they’ll just collect dust on the server.

It is when designers go overboard on navigation that a problem arises. Too many links overwhelm readers and they then skip over most of them in an effort not to waste time reading a lot of irrelevant stuff. There is no need to link to every other page on your site from any one page (with the exception of an index). This approach will hinder a reader more than aid them.

Worse yet, if visitors find your site’s navigation confusing or convoluted, they’ll simply give up and head off to explore the rest of the Web, never to return.

Generally, however, the simpler the better. You want everyone to be able to use your navigation, not just those with the latest browsers.

Although primary navigation is very important users should not be forced to rely heavily on primary navigation but rather be able to use smaller “doorways” to jump to related pages.

It would be useful to open up a few sites and take a look at the web site navigation, how it’s positioned, how easy it is to go through etc.

Consider how many pages you can access from any page. Can you go to related pages? Are there hints to help users navigate? Is there a site map with all the pages in the website? Can you figure out where you are at any time?

There are 3 common types of webpage navigation: Left, Top and Right navigation.

Each of the have it’s own pro’s and con’s:

• Left navigation has become very popular because it is responds to user behavior: start reading from the left – read navigation links – click on the desired link – keep reading fresh content to the left.

• Top navigation is the second most common navigation. The advantage of a top navigation bar is that it leaves more room below for content and other relevant information and can be very useful as long as the navigation stands out. People tend to ignore everything that looks remotely like adds. Also, use of drop-down menus enhance the visitors surfing experience as it takes up far less screen real estate thus leaving more room for actual page content.

  However, visitors can’t see the entire set of selections without at least mousing over each header. The window may need to be maximized (depending on the actual control  used to implement the menu) to see the full set of menu headers across the page without scrolling.

• Right navigation – For English language based web sites people read from left to right. Thus, a menu situated on the right hand side would be difficult to use because visitors tend to read the navigation first and then the body text. However, some users think it’s more logical to follow the content with navigation on the right, next to the scrollbar, but that’s a preference more than anything. 

So which navigation method shall you select?

After evaluating the pros and cons, the Drop-down menus are the preferred navigation method. A usability tests show that users feel more comfortable while navigating the site using effective Drop-down menus. 

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