Navigation is one of the major factors that contribute to the amount of traffic a website receives either directly or indirectly. Navigation is very important as it determines how accessible the pages of your site are. Like in all other aspects of web designing, the rule of navigation is to keep it simple. Web surfers have a characteristic behavior of avoiding complex pages. They do not like to be kept guessing or wondering how to navigate around a page. Despite the quality of your site, navigation will determine whether your visitors will proceed to read the content. This article gives insight into some guidelines that you can utilize while designing your website to ensure that the navigation is as friendly as possible.

Organization is a key factor in web designing and particularly in navigation. When it comes to links, it is important to ensure that they are well organized and placed under the relevant categories in order to make the visitor’s work much easier. Have the main links at the top of the page and other important links throughout the text at the relevant places. Related links can be placed together in order for visitors to find more related information regarding their choice subject more easily.

Your navigation links should also be apparent and outstanding.  This means that they should be placed where they can be seen clearly like at the top of the page. Main links should be allocated enough space above the fold line so that the user does not have to scroll to locate them. Avoid including main links at the bottom of the page unless you are repeating them to ensure the visitor does not miss them. If you use images for navigation, make sure they blend in perfectly with the design of the website.

Your links should also be easy to understand and concise. Usually the available space may be enough to accommodate long links with elaborate information. There is need to design your site such that the available links contain the most important information about your site. Each link should reflect the kind of information contained in the page that it is directing to. Visitors need to know exactly where a page is leading them to when they are clicking and whether they are likely to find the information they are looking for. The links should also follow each other in a systematic and consistent way. Web surfers simply do not have the time and the patience to figure out where to find a certain link on your site and whenever they experience difficulties navigating on your site, they will simply log out of your site and look for a friendlier site. Make sure your links are located in all pages in the same sequence to make it easy to navigate through the site.

Whenever you are working with a large number of links; use DHTML menus to categorize and sub categorize your links so that visitors do not miss out on some of them.