cre84web – Website design and web based technologies

Some people are great organizers, and some just aren’t. Navigation is the backbone of a websites visual organization, and it had better be good!

Before you start to sweat, any good website design/development company will be able to help you develop your navigation. Please note I said “help”, you the business/website owner need to be there too. Successful navigation requires both a skilled designer and the client.

The standing theory on website navigation has been that nothing should be more than two clicks away. This still holds true as a minimum practice, but with flyout navigation you can often build a website where everything is just one click away. Any visitor to your website, should largely be able to find what they are initially looking for in 5-10 seconds.

The trick to solid usable navigation is keeping it well organized, intuitive and as simple as possible.
Think of your company and the key areas you service, throw in “about us” and “contact” buttons and your almost there. OK, so I might be oversimplifying, but you get the point. Think of how you would break down your company and message in terms of a flow chart. Start with the key components and break them down into sub-sets. The sub-sets will be your secondary navigation or flyout menus.

Consider what types of things each client might be looking for from your website/company. I might be looking for “x” but Bob might be looking for “Y”. In addition, what will existing clients be looking for. Try to keep your primary set of navigation to roughly eight buttons or less, then decide where to put the sub-sets of information. Type this out in a word document so you can visualize your message and where your users might look for a certain piece of information. Also, check out the websites of your competitors to get some ideas…no point re-inventing the wheel completely.

One caveat, do not make your secondary navigation too long either. If the secondary navigation for a given section is too long, a users eyes will have trouble scanning it, they will grow frustrated and leave!

Here is an example of a possible navigation set for an area sports bar/restaurant called O’Mallys. In this case there are six main buttons plus a ‘Home’ button, the indented lists are the flyouts or sub navigation for the relevant section:

About O’Mallys
- Latest news
- Our story
- Community work
- Calendar of events
- Photo gallery

Menu
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Sunday brunch
- Wine list
- Catering

Hosting your event
Catering your event
Locations
Contact Us
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