Navigation Basics

I'm sure it's happened to you. You get to a site, try to figure it out, can't, and then just give up and look for another resource. Don't let this happen to your site! Good navigation is an essential ingredient for any successful website.

The navigation design is the road map of your site.

1. Establish a home base: Make sure your visitor can get to your home page easily and quickly from ANY page or link.

2. Be consistent: Carry your navigation elements across all pages

3. Use pictures when needed and use ALT text. Remember to compress your graphics using Adobe Photoshop Elements "Save for web" feature. You want each image to be as small as possible for quicker download times.

4. Decide on the type of navigation for your site. Is your information hierarchicial, chronological, topical, thematic?

5. Use a navigation bar for your main links, with sublinks from there if needed. No hard or fast rule about how and where to put a nav bar. Nothing wrong with the right-hand side (as you can see from this wiki!)

6. Create a link for a sitemap, so that your visitors can find information quickly

7. Embedded links: These work great in a wiki, which will automatically create a linked page. Remember, you shouldn't have any orphan pages in a wiki.

8. THE SIMPLER THE BETTER. Really.