How To Get The Most Out of Your Site Navigation

Designing an effective website is not just about slapping up some amazing graphics and watching the visitors get all happy - no, it's about giving your visitors an experience that pulls them back. Yes, you will need to get a lot of things right, and of course our topic of discussion concerns site navigation. Navigation is one of those things that people will not think about if it is good, but they will think about it if it is bad.

How fast your site loads in a browser is an important metric, and it really needs to be less than five seconds. There are a number of things that will affect load time, and perhaps most of all is your images or graphics that you use. The reason load time matters with navigation is because it affects the total site experience or rather the quality of it. You already have existing sites, so if you have to optimize your images, then it is best to just suck it up and do it.

You can make additions based on your content and page layout such as placing a "TOP" link at the bottom of pages that are long. It is a very simple matter to do, and there is no real reason for not doing it in our minds. We believe this is something you must do on all of your longer pages otherwise you will be forcing people to scroll all the way up.

All site really should have a site map, and that includes static sites, too. Most people will never need it if your navigation is good; however, they are mandatory for search engine optimization reasons. With Wordpress blogs, or any other kind too, you can find several types of plugins that are really excellent for site maps. You probably know about them if you have been involved with IM even for a short while.

If website usability is new to you, then that is one topic you should definitely learn more about. If your navigation is insufficient, then you will have precious few seconds before visitors will decide to leave. What is nice about setting up your navigation is that the principles are essentially the same regardless of the type of site you have.