Ideal Navigation (Exclusive Article)

What kind of navigation should a website have? Is it possible to make it ideal?

Every webmaster asks similar questions, probably, when designing his resource. In this article, I tried to expound the fundamentals, in my opinion, of ideal navigation – which is to say “excellent signs". Though navigation is simple to make, it is a rare designer who hasn't tried to make it more complex.



So, the fundamental features of ideal navigation are the following :

- Clarity

How much time can be spent on learning "to navigate" a site using new approaches to navigation? For each person this time interval is unique, and the necessity is obvious. But why should visitors have to learn how to navigate from square one each of the million websites in the Internet? Visitors seek useful information, and webmasters offer them, instead, a lesson in website navigation, in the construction and character of unfamiliar administration panels.
But is obtaining the resource information worth such effort? More often than not, the answer is no.... Ideal navigation should clear for users from the first glance.

- Easily Recognizable Links

I don't have to search the entire screen with the mouse, and look for links according to the changes caused by a moving cursor. I want to be linked to every place where the cursor indicates a link exists. Readers have become accustomed to visual links, most often ones that are blue and underlined. Designers constantly ignore this principle and no matter how funny it sounds, their navigation must be sought, as it's not easily found....

Advertisement located on the site likewise can be located in or near the navigation. Sometimes it's rather difficult to see the difference between navigation buttons and ads. We learn how to recognize ads by repeated signs – layout, graphics, effective slogans, but why not help out the website visitor by allotting a space with the designation "Advertisements" (or something of that nature). After all, this is a sign of good style.

- Uniformity

If I managed to understand the navigation menu on the first page (which is sometimes not altogether a simple process), ideal navigation does not require me to perform this task on every page. This is why, during the construction process, the Webmaster should stick to one style. This pertains to images, sizes and textures of buttons, their placement, names, fonts and colors.

- Easily Found Links

Navigation is contrasting, and I don't have to waste time on looking for it, because it is located in the standard places – on the top of the website page or to the left. Links to alternative resources are located in the upper portion of the webpage. Links to continue forward and to return to the top are located at the bottom of the webpage.

- Well-Named, Readable Links

Links size is sufficiently large and there is no need to strain your eyes in order to find links with the mouse. Navigation text is easily read . Pages of large size are equipped with inner links (anchors), and subsections are well and meaningfully named, with enlarged text, which precludes the necessity to try and grasp their meaning in order to determine where you're headed in the website.

- Few Links

A wise Webmaster plans the structure of the site well and does not try to fill free space with a large quantity of hyperlinks, which only distract visitors from the basic menu and forces them to make a sometimes difficult choice. A site with ideal navigation does not have unnecessary additional hyperlinks in text, but likewise it is not suffering from the absolute absence of hyperlinks.

- Quick Loadtime

During webpage download, navigation should be first thing that becomes visible to the website visitor, and he shouldn't need to sit and wait for the announcement "Ready", in order to transfer to the page he needs.

- Visitor Always Knows Where He ' s Located on Your Site

The menu's hierarchy reflects the site's structure. In this way, it is not difficult to determine one's current location in the site. When the Webmaster keeps the status bar, the visitor knows exactly where he will land after pushing a button. The color of viewed and unviewed links differ one from the other. The text, appearing on demand, gives a short presentation of the content of the webpage to which you are heading. If the page is on a different site, visitors will know it from the given information. If the total quantity of pages is large, the Webmaster makes a map available.

- ALT Parameters on Graphics Links

Internet connection sometimes could be better, and if the browsers allow the opportunity to view sites without graphics, then why should Web-masters limit this privilege?

- The Absence of the Dreaded 404 Mistake

Links which are not completely tested do not lead to an empty page. When a website lacks this error, the level of belief visitors have in your resource is significantly raised. Users should not find the ill-famed 404 message indicated a mistake in your website.

Well that ' s about it .

Ideal navigation is unattainable, but a good Webmaster tries to make his site comfortable despite this fact. After all, clear and comfortable site navigation is more profitable than ambiguous and uncomfortable navigation, even from an economic point of view.