Website Navigation Tips

Website Navigation is an important consideration in the planning stages of a web page. If you observe most good websites, the website navigation (same as the menu selections) are always in the same location on each web page, irregardless of the number of pages on the website. You have to decide where you will place the menu selection (navigation) on the page, I prefer the menu and sub menus to be on the left column and the major category selection across the top.

Navigation around a website is critical to keeping your visitors informed about where they are at all times, where a certain link will take them and which link will provide specific information. You have to also ensure that all links on every page is functional. Poorly constructed sites lack a flow on their website and between their web pages with either badly setup menu locations or broken links. One sure and quick way to loose customers.

I like to list all my main menu selections on the left side of my web page so visitors to my site can quickly glance at all the choices. The other option I am partial to is a drop down menu, but that forces the user to take an extra step to see the menus and submenus. So all this possibilities must be taken into consideration.

The website navigation on the following website layout  can be setup either on the left or right side of the web page. Some sites like to list their menu choices on the left column as well as the footer. Some sites place only the least visited or least informative page selections on the footer (like contact us, about us, resources pages etc). So it all depends on personal taste and the type of website you are designing.

On this site we have the main categories on the top (just below the header), the menu and sub menus are on the left and special pages at the footer. The right column is for sponsor links and advertising. Since mine is a tutorial site, we want to provide  clean fresh look, easy to read and move around.