How to get your website navigation right - Top Tips

Not only will your users benefit from being able to access the information they want as quickly as possible, it will also help you organise your site efficiently.

Here are some tips from the Bytestart team to help you get your website navigation right the first time.

Planning
If you are on the verge of creating your new small business site, this is the perfect time to create your site navigation. It is much harder to implement a new navigation system once you have several pages of disorganised content on there.

Categories
Make sure that you break up your site pages into meaningful categories - this will help the user find the information they're after, and will also help you order your content.

Directory Depth
Many site owners can be "overly enthusiastic" when it comes to creating categories and sub-categories for their websites. Try not to have too deep a directory structure - many "experts" suggest your content should never be more than 3 directories down from the home page, e.g. site -- products -- computers -- laptops.

Navigation Position
Hundreds of web usability studies suggest that your menu navigation should be on the TOP LEFT or TOP (or both if you prefer).

Consistent Navigation
Probably the most important tip is to ensure that the size, font and appearance of your navigation links are consistent across the entire site. Users will simply disappear if they find your navigation structure hard to follow.

Logo
How many times have you clicked on a site's logo and nothing’s happened? Make sure you link your site logo to your homepage, on each and every page of the site.

Search Box
If users cannot immediately find what they have searched for on Google, they will usually try another site. If you place a prominent search box within your site structure, you're giving yourself another chance to capture potential clients or customers. Either use your own, or perhaps try Google’s Custom Search (which we use on Bytestart - and is excellent).

Site Map
Many site owners create a site map which lists all the pages within the site, on one page. This can be handy for your site users, but is also a good way of telling the major search engines about your site - the best known being the Google Sitemap tool, in the Webmaster Tools section.)