If a site does not have a good navigation system, a visitor can lose his way very easily. As a result, he will leave such an inhospitable website. How to organize site navigation competently?
Navigation system is the set of hyperlinks that help a visitor to find required information on a site. Hyperlinks for site navigation can be either textual or graphic. In case when during the cursor hover or click on the link it changes its external appearance (color, font size), such link is called a rollover (a textual or a graphic one).
What are the main usability requirements to site navigation system?
It is important that a site visitor always can distinguish the link from the main text on the page by sight, that is why hyperlinks are conventionally set off in underlining and another color, for example, blue. Mouse cursor over an active link takes the form of a hand. It prompts the visitor, that it is a hyperlink, and he can click on it. If the link is not visually different from the rest of the text, it will be very difficult for a visitor to find any information on the site.
The answers to the following questions are important for site navigation as far web usability is concerned.
- On what page is the visitor now?
- What pages has he already visited?
- What other pages can he visit?
That is why hyperlinks are conventionally set off in different colors. It helps site visitors to distinguish between visited and non-visited links. For example, an active non-visited link may be blue, a hovered link may be red, and a visited link may violet.
A lot of site developers may ask: “How many links can be placed on a site?” There is no single answer. Depending on the number of pages, that a site contains, there can be 100-200 hyperlinks as well as 50 000 or even more. The precise number of hyperlinks for a particular site can be determined only experimentally. There is only one rule – the number of links should be sufficient to provide convenient use of the site by a visitor. However, site navigation system must not occupy the larger part of space on the site. Depending on the complexity of the site, the navigation system may occupy about 5-15% of useful area of the site, and only in rare cases more.
How to start development of site navigation system?
You should start development of the site navigation system only after you have formulated the tasks of the site and estimated the amount of text and graphic information, i.e. site content. Otherwise new materials just will not fit into the existing structure of the navigation system, and you will have to modify it. Why? The answer is simple. If a page is deleted or its URL has changed, it will inevitably lead to changes in site navigation – all links, that connect the erased or edited page with the others, will have to be changed.
TAGS
website design,
site navigation,
navigation system,
usability,
hyperlink,
link |
website design 
