How to Make Efficient Navigation Structure in Your Website
Maintain a link back to your home page., Design a row of links called navigation trail or breadcrumb trail on your pages either at the top, bottom, or both., Make sure to have page jumps on pages with multiple sections., Use Back to Top links on all...
Step-by-Step Guide
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Step 1: Maintain a link back to your home page.
This is done to ensure that visitors don’t get lost when they go too deep in the site, and return to the home page easily with just one click and look for different information.
Use a graphic banner or a logo for your homepage link.
Keep it somewhere obvious, usually on the top of the site's pages. -
Step 2: Design a row of links called navigation trail or breadcrumb trail on your pages either at the top
This enables the visitor who has entered your site from a search engine to backtrack at any point and return to the parent page.
It also tells them their location within the site.
Use the hard-coded bread crumbs or JavaScript bread crumbs to make the breadcrumb trail. , For long pages, in-page navigation is necessary.
This is where page jumps helps.
With just one click and your visitor reaches the part of the content he/she is searching for.Remember, too much scrolling makes the visitor give up after some time and leave the site.
A page jump helps you avoid that. , This link takes the visitor to the top of the page.
Place "back to top" links at the end of every section. , A site-map is an important part of a website.
It clearly shows all the contents of the site in one page, structured and hyper-linked for the convenience of visitors.
Apart from making the navigation structure user-friendly, it also aids the search engine spiders/crawlers , In other words, keep your pages medium in length.
Long pages, although they make navigation simpler and shorter, are boring to visitors.
On the other hand, very short pages makes creating a navigation structure a hard process and the visitor is bored from going from page to page too many times to find what he/she wants. -
Step 3: bottom
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Step 4: or both.
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Step 5: Make sure to have page jumps on pages with multiple sections.
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Step 6: Use Back to Top links on all long pages with multiple sections.
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Step 7: Build your site-map.
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Step 8: Make a trade-off between too many pages and too much navigation.
Detailed Guide
This is done to ensure that visitors don’t get lost when they go too deep in the site, and return to the home page easily with just one click and look for different information.
Use a graphic banner or a logo for your homepage link.
Keep it somewhere obvious, usually on the top of the site's pages.
This enables the visitor who has entered your site from a search engine to backtrack at any point and return to the parent page.
It also tells them their location within the site.
Use the hard-coded bread crumbs or JavaScript bread crumbs to make the breadcrumb trail. , For long pages, in-page navigation is necessary.
This is where page jumps helps.
With just one click and your visitor reaches the part of the content he/she is searching for.Remember, too much scrolling makes the visitor give up after some time and leave the site.
A page jump helps you avoid that. , This link takes the visitor to the top of the page.
Place "back to top" links at the end of every section. , A site-map is an important part of a website.
It clearly shows all the contents of the site in one page, structured and hyper-linked for the convenience of visitors.
Apart from making the navigation structure user-friendly, it also aids the search engine spiders/crawlers , In other words, keep your pages medium in length.
Long pages, although they make navigation simpler and shorter, are boring to visitors.
On the other hand, very short pages makes creating a navigation structure a hard process and the visitor is bored from going from page to page too many times to find what he/she wants.
About the Author
Grace Hall
Dedicated to helping readers learn new skills in practical skills and beyond.
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