Is Your Site Navigation a Can of Worms?

Want your own web site? If you want a successful one, you'd better get your navigation straight before you launch it.

It's a fundamental concept too many other sites neglect. Simple, user-friendly site navigation helps keep visitors happy. If it takes a rocket scientist to figure it out, they won't be.

So, if your web site menu is so badly organized that a visitor has to:

- Go to page 'A' then

- Press link 'Q' typed in font size '1'

- To get to link 'R'

- Located in subsection '27B'

- On page '3942GTHJF', which is where the real infomation begins

Chances are they're going to leave with the 'Home' button, the 'Bookmarks' menu, or screen closing 'x' in the upper right hand corner. No one will even try to deal with your navigation if it's a can of worms.

So, how can you arrange your navigation to be more user-friendly?

For ecommerce mini-sites, the theory is simple. First your visitor reads about the product, then they buy the product, then you give them access to the product. Make sure they know where to contact you if something goes wrong. You get paid and they stay happy, so everyone wins.

If you have a larger site:

- Break it up into a home page, contact page, links page, and any other major sections sorted logically.

- Put the main site menu to all of the major sections on all of the major section. This will make them 'web' organized, or accessible so that any main page can go to any other.

- Make each of your major sections a 'sub-home' page and then put the content that belongs there into a sub-menu. This means the major section will fan out to each item in its menu, and each of those items should link back to the 'sub-home' page. This makes it very intuitive to go somewhere, and then come back.

- Make sure it only takes a maximum of three clicks to get from anywhere to anywhere else on your web site. At the very least, it should be easy to return to the 'Home' page at any time.

- The navigation should be so easy to understand, anyone can use it even if they've never seen it before. This is important, because if you're starting a new site, no one ever will have seen it before!

- Include a site map. A site map is a page which links to every other page on your site, except for those you want restricted, like download pages. Not only is it someplace for a visitor to find something if all else fails, but they make your site more spider-friendly.

Want your visitors to NOT be annoyed? Make sure you have good site navigation. If you take the time to make their lives easier, your site design will pay off for you.