How To Make Convenient Site Navigation?
If you work in the field of Internet resources, you should roughly understand what kind of “beast” such usability is. This word, translated from English, means “ease of use.” The higher the degree of convenience of a resource, the higher its traffic and the more successful the entire project. In other words, if your site is inconvenient for visitors, then they will not want to use it and, accordingly, will not purchase the services or products that you offer.
Usability is determined by two factors – the content and form of the resource. Undoubtedly, the content of the project is of great importance for visitors, but what is the use of it if they cannot figure out how to get to the necessary information.
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The form of the web resource includes convenient site navigation. The presence of function buttons, a good menu, and, of course, try to make a nice and high-quality web design. So, if you decide to create your site, then take care of its usability during development, and not after many years of failure. I recommend paying special attention to navigation on the site as we do at the web development company Los Angeles.
What is effective navigation?
Let’s imagine that you decide to make site navigation yourself, and you need to pick up a disc with HTML video lessons at an unfamiliar metro station. You just recently moved to this city and first appeared in the subway. It seems to you that everything is confusing and complicated. Because some lines travel in circles, others – in different directions of the city.
Only pointers can save the situation. No matter where you need to get, there are signs on all the prominent places in the subway, thanks to which you can easily find out which train you need to take and in which direction. Arriving at the station, you will follow the more specific signs pointing to the exit to the desired street.
The convenience of navigation is that in real life and on the website, you can not remember the road, but simply follow the signs and get to the right place. If the “pointers” on the site are built correctly, then the user will be able to navigate the resource without any difficulties and find the necessary material.
What types of navigation to choose?
To understand what we can offer visitors, let’s look at the main types of site navigation and choose which ones are suitable for us and which are not.
- The main one – This includes sections of the resource and all links leading to the main page;
- language – allows the user to select the desired language and view the web resource on it already;
- Advertising – It includes all posted on the site, advertising hyperlinks;
- global – these are links to pages that you can access from any part of the Internet resource. For example, a link to a mobile version of the site or to the home page;
- thematic – helps in moving through notes and articles of the same subject, from section to section;
- movement in content – These are links involved in internal linking;
- reference navigation on the site – A vivid example is bread crumbs. The visitor can always observe his way from the main page to the one on which he is now located;
- drop-down – the resource has drop-down elements, such as an order form or questionnaire.
If you are the owner of a large web resource. Then you need to use the expanded navigation, that is, implement all of the above types. In the case when the Internet project is “modest,”. Then you most likely will not need a drop-down and language project.
And do not forget to design a 404 page that visitors to your site get into if they come to a non-existent address. The design of 404 pages should be in the style of your web resource. It must also contain all the necessary navigational elements, so as not to lose visitors who accidentally wandered onto it.