|
|
|||||||||||||
|
Tips On Effectively Organizing Your Navigation
Not all links are created equal. While all of your links may be important, you must sort and prioritize to come up with an effective navigation scheme. Here's what you should keep in mind: 1. Sort your links Your links should be organized according to their relationship to each other. Any time you can find a way to divide your links into two or more categories, do so. If you have more than 5 or 6 links, categorizing becomes very important. Try to find some natural groups. For example, suppose you sell widgets, and your site has this set of links:
Your major categories are:
When you separate the two sets of links according to those major categories, it becomes much easier to sort the available information. The simple reason is that a choice between two items is less complex than a choice between 6 items. It's the principle of dividing and conquering. Take a look at the following site: Notice the four main categories--Products, Resources, Support and Purchase. These four categories help visitors narrow down at a glance which area they need to look in to find the info they want. Imagine if all of those links were lumped into one long list. How much harder would it be to figure out where to go? Often, you might not have clear-cut categories. For example, you may have three links that all go together in one category (such as "Products"), plus several more miscellaneous links. Even if the miscellaneous links don't fit conveniently under one category name, you can still group your links. Put the three product links together, then all the miscellaneous links in a separate place. 2. Prioritize your links Hopefully, you have some idea of what you want visitors to do on your site. Your site should be designed to drive a specific action--in other words, get visitors to do a specific thing. Once you've decided what your primary goal is, your navigation should reflect it. The links that pertain most closely to your main goals should be emphasized the most. You need to guide the visitor in the direction you want him or her to go. Prioritize. Ask yourself the question, "What is most important?" What do you really want to accomplish? (I'll give you a hint: "About the company" should not be a top priority link.) Here are several examples of sites that prioritize well: On the home page, you'll see three main links. These links are geared at attracting the company's major types of customers. All other links on the page are much smaller. On this page, it's clear that the company wants visitors to click on one of their three product links: Publish, Search or Promote. The site does a good job of getting attention and guiding the visitor in a specific direction. Right from the beginning, it's obvious that the company wants visitors to join one of their three clubs. All other links are relegated to the bottom of the page. By carefully prioritizing, these sites are able to narrow down the choices and make it more likely that visitors will head in the direction they want them to go. About The Author There are 605.6 million people online. Can they find your business? Jamie Kiley creates powerful and engaging websites that make sure YOUR company gets noticed. Visit http://www.kianta.com for a free quote. Get a quick, free web design tip every two weeks--sign up for Jamie's newsletter: http://www.kianta.com/newsletter.php
MORE RESOURCES:
|
 |
|
|
Keyword Density We can't emphasize enough the importance of including keyword-rich content on your site to increase your ranking potential. Simply put, keywords are the words and/or word phrases people use when searching. Do You Hate Your Website? Web Site Sales To Hit $316 Billion Over The Next 6 Years What dollar amount does your web site contribute to this $316 billion dollar trend?Have you spent thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands on your web site only to discover that it attracts more flies than customers?Do you hate your web site, your web developer or your entire IT department?Do not despair! You are not alone!A great web site is crucial in order to effectively communicate to a business's target audience. It is important for Chief Executives and small business owners to pay close attention to the effect that their web site has on their business. 3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website Before you start worrying about marketing your website on the internet it always pays dividends to look at the website itself and get the fundamentals right before looking to shout about it from the virtual mountain-tops.You may already have thought about the following 3 ways and some of you may already have them in place on your website. Tips For An Effective Website A successful website is something that everyone venturing into the new arena of Internet marketing and communications wants to have. Your website will often be a potential client's first impression of you and your business. Top Ten Fonts for Website Design The top ten fonts for website design might change in order, but for the most part the fonts that make up this list stay the same due to their popularity. In general, the top ten list includes Arial, Frutiger, Futura, Gills Sans, Helvetica, Lucida, Optima, Palatino, Agfa Rotis, and Univers. HTML - A Website Language Explained - For Over 35s This is a very perfunctory look at the website code HTML, for those who never did any kind of Computer Studies at school and have never had the need or opportunity to look 'under the skirt' of your average website. There's nothing that an experienced webmaster will find here that's not very basic, but for those who have just begun to discover the 'website' and especially those venturing into. Bad Web Design: ActiveX ActiveX uses an interesting method for enforcing security .. 7 Reasons Why Using CSS is a Must CSS is a new option for website designers that have been using HTML and tables for most of their web designing careers. Of course, it is a huge change and requires learning a new language and skill, however most people are saying CSS is worth it and it will give you more control, options, and is easier to edit. Web Site Accessibility Making your site accessible means making it available to be used by all. It's too easy to think that what looks ok to you will do for all. Simple Lines and Shapes for Your Logo Design Geometric designs come in all shapes and sizes? and lines. You can create your logo design or customize your illustration by using simple lines and shapes to create your very own unique image. How to Design a Search Engine Friendly Web Site Many web site designers don't design their sites for the search engines. This is a huge mistake because they miss out on attracting lots of free traffic. Top Six Ways To Make Your Visitors To Hate YOU! We will take a look at why your visitors may hate you maybe already do! There are many things that make YOUR visitors dislike you, but we take a look the top sex things that make your click the back button on their browser.1. Creating a Basic Web Design Template A "template" is simply a design format which you can apply to all (or most) of the pages in your web site. The first advantage of using a "template" system is that it allows you to make your most important design decisions at the beginning, and then just focus on content. 9 Ways to Gain Your Visitors Respect The internet is filled with sites and they are good and bad. Some have been known for a long time and some still struggle to get the respect and fame they think they deserve. Build Web Pages from the Top Left Corner Down There are two important reasons to build your website from the top left hand corner down.The first one is that this is the way people (at least in the western world) read pages. Turn Benefits Into Sales with Streaming Media The "Wow" factor that accompanied the introduction of streaming media on the Web has long passed, and the technology now has to prove itself to marketers. Its' acceptance by advertisers, in conjunction with other rich media technologies, is on the upswing, but it's still not widely used to enhance commercial sites. 6 Reasons Why Using Flash is a BIG Mistake Most web designers and web design companies will try to convince you that if you want your business to have the best site possible that you MUST have a flash site. Flash, for those of you who are newbies, is a software program that can create really cool special effects and animations. Web Site Professionalism? What Is It? Your web site should be-visitor friendly to navigatesearch engine friendly for the crawlersAutomated with ecommerce and subscription forms.. How to Get Your Visitors to Create Content for Your Website An ongoing challenge for webmasters today is to provide fresh content that gives visitors a reason to return to their site. Unless you have a full-time staff dedicated to creating regular content, the time involved can be crippling. Business Opportunity for Graphic Designers As a graphic designer, you are sitting on a gold mine. You have a skill other people do not have, and you can use that skill to earn a good living.
|
||||||||
| Interesting sites: site map - snus- express lån- Rejse information- |
UBB Webdesign.com © 2008