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December 2002

Website Technique
Navigation

Having a poor navigation system was one of the biggest mistakes I made with my website when I first started. I had six-teen main navigation buttons plus many sub navigation buttons. . . .way to many to be effective.

You really need to think about the type of person who is your targeted visitor and what he/she would be looking for. You can have several different types of visitors, but more than a couple means you should have more than one website so that each site can be more targeted. This is more necessary than ever in our increasingly competitive web environment.

Global Navigation
Try to keep your main navigation buttons to an absolute minimum. The more of them you have the more you will confuse your visitor. Keep them the same on each page of your site so that the visitor always feels like he/she can get to the main areas of interest quickly. Also, having the main buttons on every page makes the visitor more comfortable because they never feel lost. These buttons are referred to as your "Global Navigation" Buttons.

Sub Navigation
Once you get a visitor to one of their main areas of interest on your site you can have more targeted and content specific buttons taking them deeper into your site. The mistake I made was to try to put all these Sub Navigation buttons along with my Global Navigation buttons. I wanted to make sure no one would miss anything and in my efforts to do that I made absolutely sure that everyone would miss everything because there was too much to pick from.

I see this scenario over and over again on websites of my students who are trying to act like Yahoo! and be everything to everybody. As I always say, "Yahoo! has enough money to advertise on every bus in America and you don't, so don't try to be like them."

Check your site
Yes, I know it will be a royal pain to redo your site after you have put 32 navigation buttons on it, but you want to chance to make money don't you?

Before you even look at your site, determine the one or two profiles of the types of visitor you want to attract, then make global navigation buttons that will specifically suit them. If you come up with ten different types of visitors, either you are unrealistic or you need about five more websites.

The biggest lesson I ever ignored was when people told me not to try to be all things to all people. My pigheadedness kept me from being rich at a much earlier age. I haven't made that mistake since and my bank account is happy that I haven't..

 


Upcoming web techniques

  • Pop Under Boxes

  • Sell Down Technique

  • Third Party Applications

  • How to make your website sell

  • Web customer service

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