IG Blog

The easier it is to navigate around your website, the longer people will stay on it, and the longer they stay on it, the more likely it is that they will do what you want them to do e.g. buy something, give their personal details, etc. Therefore, considering how people will navigate your website is a very important aspect of website design. It is something which you should plan at the start of the website design process rather than just making it up as you go along.

Your overall objective regarding the navigation of your website is for visitors to it to be able to find the information that they want with as few clicks of the mouse as possible. Put simply, the fewer the number of clicks required by a visitor to find what they are looking for, the better your website navigation is. The more times visitors click without finding whatever it is that they are looking for, the more chance there is that their next click will be the one on the close window icon.

A link is a word, or short phrase, that when clicked takes visitors from one part of your website to another part of your website, and using them effectively as part of your website design is absolutely essential. The more pages your website has, the more links you will need. If your website has 10 pages, then you will probably need around 70-100 links. If your website has hundreds of pages, then you will probably need hundreds of links.

In principle, each page of your website should link to all of the other pages of your website, as that would mean that visitors only have to click the mouse once to find what they are looking for. However, if your website has many pages, then this is impossible, as you would have so many links on each of your pages that there would be little space left for any content. What you should aim for though is to have every page that is highly relevant to another page to include a link to it.

You can do this by including links within the written content on your web pages. For example, if you refer to ‘Sony TVs’ on one of your pages, and another page on your site gives information on Sony TVs, then you should make the phrase ‘Sony TVs’ link to your Sony TVs page. You can also have a list of relevant web pages on your website at the end of each of your web pages. So, using the same example, if you have written a web page about Sony TVs in general, at the end of that page you could link to your web pages on Sony TV repairs, Sony TV prices and Sony TV accessories.

As well as having links within, and at the bottom of, your written content, you should also incorporate a menu bar along the top, or left hand side, of your website design. You can include lots of links within a menu bar without cluttering up the look of your website. This is the perfect place to put links that are not directly relevant to the web page that a visitor is viewing, and avoid the need for visitors to have to consistently return to your homepage.
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This article was written by a website design expert who has more than 10 years experience in the industry. He is currently doing website design in Larchmont, Scarsdale & Bedford and can be contacted at http://kinneymedia.com