Importance of Efficient Website Navigation

The most important and crucial factor to ensure that a visitor of your website stay hooked to your site is through providing effective website navigation. Most visitors get put off when they notice that the site does not include good navigations and they might opt to just switch over to another site due to this one aspect. One factor which has been noticed most of the time is that attractive websites have similar layouts. Always design navigational elements keeping in mind the basic purpose of your website. Since a website is usually designed with the intended audience in focus, there are some guidelines which needs to be followed.

Ensure that all navigational elements are distinct links by using standard conventions for links such as buttons, menus, underlining the text ,changing color on mouse etc. Avoid using ambiguous names for links.On the other hand, while utilizing non-conventional links, let it be made clear to the user that it is a link.Keep in mind the "Three Click Rule" which is used by most professional web designers.Studies have proved that majority of users will not click more than 3 links to reach either the target page or the information they require.

Web designers need to make certain that every page on their site need to be reachable by just 3 clicks.Most of the effort must be targeted towards making your website simple and elegant,as often visitors browse your site for information and seldom its for entertainment.

List of the Navigation Element Locations:

• Top Menus – This menu bar is located below the site logo which is part of the page header graphic.These menus can be either in the form of drop down menus,single links or expanding menus.Its optional to use either graphic or text for each menu item.Hyperlinks are usually associated with these menus.
  

• Left Side / Right Side Navigation – Left side/Right side navigation is displayed as a column on left or right side.These navigations can either be a single link or an expanding menu.Also note that mostly right side navigations are used for advertisements instead of links.
  

• Bottom Menus – Designers have the option of displaying bottom menus as either a menu bar or footer.Graphics or text links will be used in the case of menu bars while text links are used in the case of footers.

Some Important Navigation Elements:

• Internal Page Links – As mentioned earlier, ensure that every page is within 2 or 3 clicks from the home page. Also, important pages need to be just one click away.

• Shopping Carts – For sites which utilize shopping carts,there needs to be a view cart occuring on every page.
  

• External Links – It is a common practice to use external links in the text area on a website.These are used to refer to an another website location which provides some useful information.

• Advertisements – Ads are usually a graphic or text with a corresponding hyperlink. Ads can be placed almost anywhere on a webpage but the preferred location is just under the header banner or under the navigation elements on the left side.

• Site Map – A site map is the most efficient method to help in navigation of your website in a heirarchical manner.

A clear and distinct navigation system can increase the numbers of pages viewed a visitor.This in turn can boost the time that a visitor stays on a page.Indirectly this will also increase the sales or whatever your site is meant to perform,eventually leading to the success of your business and website.