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
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