How effective is your Website navigation?

Having an easy navigation is critically important to the success of your website and subsequently your online business. When visitors enter your site, they will want to do a lot of things as usual. Looking for what the site offers, search content and more. Hence structuring your site in such a manner that helps visitors locate information quickly and easily is very important.

In this post, I do a have a couple of navigation tips to share that can help you while setting up your website.

Before starting to design, first prepare your site navigation. This can prevent messing up your site.
Always the logo that reflects your site should be linked to your website homepage.
Think of placing the navigation in the right place. I would suggest take the top just below the header or the left position. Stop designing out of the box.

If your site contains too many links, then try to place a drop down menu for main topics. If you are using Dreamweaver, then you can use their drop down menus which are in-built.
Try to keep consistent navigation throughout your site. Avoid placing the navigation system horizontally on one page or vertically on the left in another.
Avoid complicating your visitors with too many choices. Lead them along your planed course.
Always maintain a sitemap which helps people to look for the content on the site. Well, you may wonder I myself do not have a sitemap. I should say this theme has problems with sitemap and I’ll be fixing it soon. As for now, I do have the Archives page and you can find all the articles there.
Keep your main links together at one place. This will help the surfers absorb what your site conveys at once.
Use your navigation space efficiently. What I mean is, try to use short and precise words in your links. This will help the visitor know what the corresponding page contain.
When you link the website logo to your homepage, it is ideal to have a link called Home. This can make easier in returning back to the main page.
Also showcase important links. This can interest your visitors.
Finally, a good navigation menu can lesser the number of clicks required to move from one page to another. A rule concerning this is to keep the number of clicks from one page to another at 3.