Design Effective Navigation in 10 Steps

Designing your site's navigation can be quite a tricky task at first. You need to research the number of categories you'll account for, where your visitors are most likely to click, the colour schemes that will best satisfy users, and many other aspects. With so many variables, navigation design can seem like a situation in which there's no right answer. Today, we'll discuss the task of designing navigation -- and hopefully give you a head start in creating a navigation system that works the best for your users.

While developing my own site, I sat down one evening and drew a few possible designs on paper. In my opinion, this is the best way to plan a site -- don't even switch your computer on until you've completed this stage! The process I followed was to design my navigation first and develop the site around this, using the navigation as the main point of focus.

There are, of course, many ways to create the navigation system for your site, from simple text-driven toolbars, to state-of-the-art Flash animated interfaces. The most important decision you'll face is to choose a scheme that's right for the nature of your site, and its users.

Remember, this may not be an easy task. Ask around for ideas, draw up some trial navigation systems, and have your friends, family, colleagues, or anyone else you know tell you what they like the best, and which of your designs they find the most effective. Usability testing with target audience members is, of course, ideal -- and it's not impossible to achieve on a budget! See SitePoint's usability section for more.

Top Ten Navigation Tips

Use this outline as a kind of checklist to make sure your navigation system fulfils these essential requirements. If it does, you're well on the way to success!

1. Don't Make your Users Guess!

It is sometimes necessary to spoon feed your visitors with information. Make careful decisions as to where your navigation is placed, and make it stand out. Then your users won't sit there aimlessly clicking the mouse as they search in vain for some kind of direction.

2. Keep it high

Broadsheet newspaper editors place their most important information --- latest headlines, significant content, etc --- 'above the fold', meaning in the top half of the newspaper itself. Consider your pages from the same perspective, and keep the significant information, including the navigation, as high up as possible. Not only will this mean the navigation will load first in the user's browser, but it also 'hits' the user faster. However, read Tip 3 for a word of warning on this point!

3. Below the Banners

Heard of snow blindness? Well, there's a 'condition' known among Web users as 'banner blindness'. Often, users naturally ignore content placed above any banner ads on your site -- they simply consider this space for further advertisement. Although it might be tempting, don't place any navigation elements above your banner ads.

4. Consistency is Key

I cannot stress this enough. On each and every page of your site, whether it's your forums, your links page, or anywhere else, locate your navigation in the same place, with the same styles, and don't change anything! This way, your users know exactly where to look for it.

5. Don't be Adventurous

It's always good to see your site stand out from the crowd, but please, when it comes to navigation, try and blend in with the rest of the flock. This way, regular Internet users will be used to your method of navigation to some degree -- as they will have experienced, and learned on similar systems on other sites -- and won't need to be taught anything new. Using your navigation system will be easy!

6. Add a 'Home' Button

Your home page is the most important page on your site, so make sure your users always know how to get back to it. Not only will the 'home' button let people who clicked links on your site get back to where they began, but it also allows people who land on sub-pages within your Website to find your home page -- potentially resulting in a new repeat visitor for your site.

7. Keep it Fast

Don't be fooled into thinking your users have super-fast Internet connections. They don't. Despite the fact that a large proportion of the Internet community does have a broadband (or similar) connection, there are still plenty of surfers stuck with 56k modems who like to see fast loading pages wherever possible. Optimise your images, your HTML and your stylesheets to ensure everything loads as fast as possible.

8. Quality, not Quantity

Build your navigation so that it 'streams' users into progressively more and more specific information. Internet users are a lot happier with a few choices (and navigation buttons) at each level than hundreds. Use subsections and subcategories with appropriate navigation to enable users to quickly locate the specific content they want.

9. Netscape isn't Dead!

Remember, people use other Web browsers and resolutions to the ones you use. Check your site's navigation in all possible browsers and resolutions before you launch. This way you can spot mis-alignments and errors your fancy JavaScript code before anyone else does, sparing you a great deal of embarrassment in the future.

10. Leave Out the Unimportant Stuff

Links such as 'Contact Us' and 'Privacy Policy' are best left out of your Website's main navigation. The most common place for these to go is at the bottom of the page.