The Website Map

A website is like a road system. There are paths, trails, and highways leading off in all directions. Its quite easy for a visitor to get lost and confused when exploring your site. To combat this, it's important to implement good website navigation in the web design, acting as a road map in the web of passages.

The first thing to do is to set up a home base. The home page should act as the epicenter for all site traffic to start out from. It should state clearly what options your site offers and have clear directions how to get to them.

There are a couple of different formats of navigation. A hierarchical site is a rich, informative site that is best organized as a large tree, similar to a library. Many hierarchical sites use the "bread crumb trail" approach which means that as the reader proceeds from page to page, going further and further into a specific topic, the page will inform you what steps took you there and how to return to the original place. This is ideal when trying to organize large amounts of information.

A global approach is one where the site's information is presented in a few broad categories, and the navigation here would allow easy cross traffic. It is best if its easy for the reader to easily skim through all points on the site.

Local navigation is somewhere in between the above mentioned. An approach like this would apply when there is deep information found within broader areas. Local focuses on a specific area of the site as opposed to global which is more all site inclusive.

A navigation bar lists the top level categories that a site boasts. The main concern with a navigation bar is that it takes up space that could otherwise be used for content. But it is important to ensure that your readers are focused and confident when browsing your site. You can place the your navigation bar wherever you like on your screen. Most sites set it up on the left side of the screen though some place it on the right too. Placing the bar at the top of the page has the advantage that it stays out of the way, though if its too big you may risk it blocking your readers from important content when they first reach your page. Since the navigation appears on every page, take care that it doesn't come to distract or annoy your visitor by taking up too much space. Your navigation bar should appear the same on each page to better familiarize people with your site and how it works.

Styles of navigation vary. The most basic form is embedded links, where text is linked within the body of the page. This is wonderful in areas where one wants to supplement a topic with information found anywhere on the web, though its not so efficient for attracting new browsers. Tab navigation is used when breaking into a few primary categories. Similar to the way one would arrange a binder, the website navigation links appear as tabs organizing the site into sections. A site map or table of contents is a commonly used technique because it provides your visitor with a one stop location to reach anything on your site. Its usually a page listing all the sections(if there aren't too many) located in your site with links to get to them. The disadvantage is that your visitor needs to get there first. It's is a wonderful technique to use as a supplement to your primary navigation but shouldn't be used as the primary form.

In summary, in order to be effective your navigation system should be consistent throughout the whole site, the main navigation links should be kept together,and the website should be organized with not too many links for each section. This is all to ensure that the visitor will learn how to effectively maneuver around the site and access all that the site has to offer.