Improving Your Site's Navigation

You think that you have created the most awesome website ever put on the net. You have great content, complemented by cool images and pleasing design. You even threw in some really good stuff to download, such as audio and video files. But then again, you're probably still wondering why you have an alarming 80% bounce rate, or visitors get out of the site ASAP.

Perhaps the problem is that people don't know how to get to and go around you little nook in the net. Navigation is therefore an essential design element that you can ponder on when developing your pages. Even a simple looking site can definitely attract browsers into going inside through the use of a well designed navigation system. Here are some tips that you can use in further enhancing your site's navigability.

Building The Menu Bar

One main concern that you can take into consideration when designing the menu bar is that it should be easily spotted on the page. The most common place to put the menu bar is at the top of the page. Remember to place it at the bottom of the site banner and not ever it, as this can be easily overlooked by users. One novel idea that you can use in presenting the site's menu bar is by integrating it into the to banner itself. This can be quite tricky though, as this involve some complicated coding or tedious cut and paste procedures in case you are using a web authoring software, so attempt it when you already have sufficient design skills.

The menu bar must also be readable to be used. Thus make the fonts a little larger to be able to make them readable for those that have weak eyesights. Also avoid using fancy fonts on the menu buttons for the same reason. Lastly, any background design should not blend in with the color of the text so as not to make them hard to read. As a suggestion, a simple table can be used to provide the desired effect of identifying the menu.

Linking Your Site

Connecting your site can be quite tricky. One of the first things that you must consider is the site's URL. The best thing to remember in coming up with a site address name is that it should be short and easy to remember. In case that the site's actual name is very long, use a shorthand form of writing it , either an abbreviated one or an acronym can do the trick.

In linking your pages together, name them in a rather simple manner, such as page 1, page 2 and so on. This way, it would be easier for you to write the code when creating the hyperlinks and will prevent you from creating a dead link just because of a misspelled file name. Same thing also goes in the case of images. Their names should also be descriptive of their contents. Also remember to tag it with a caption so that people will know what they are in case they don't appear as expected.

As a last reminder, recheck all your codes and files before publishing them to ensure that they are in good working order. This will definitely be a good thing to ensure a properly running site.