Imagine entering a building for the first time, the lobby is empty and you have only the signs to rely on to find your way around: elevator, reception, tenant directory. Without them, and with no one to direct you, you'd be lost. Well, your website is like a large building. When your visitors arrive, you won't be there in person to welcome them. You need to signpost your site so they can find what they're looking for with ease. Lost users tend to give up and with just one-calorie-burning click, they more than likely search for their info on your competitor's site. For this reason alone, getting the navigation right is absolutely critical to your website's success.

The term "website navigation" is used to describe the structure of your website's content. It is perhaps one of the most essential skills required in building a successful website, yet it is also often a neglected or poorly executed task by many web designers.

An effective navigation scheme for your website can greatly improve the visitor's experience and encourage "deeper" browsing.

Navigation guidelines

Designing logically
A common error made by companies of all sizes is organizing the site the way the business is organized. They design their site like they run their business and fail to think like the customer. For instance, companies may organize their site by function or by division rather than by product or service. This is unnerving for the visitor who may neither take the time nor want to decipher which division is selling the product or service they're looking for. Your site should not be a maze but a clear path to information.

Cater to the Impatient
Visitors come to your site to get information, learn something, buy something or to interact. They have a mission to accomplish. If for bulky files, heavy graphics or cumbersome flash intros they have to wait on the upload, you can bet they're patience will run out. Remember, there are 5.5 billion web pages on the Internet.

Understandable Buttons
Say what it is. For example, if the button says "vault", it may not be obvious at first glance that you meant "archives" where users could go to find older information or articles. Keep it simple, stupid. Getting fancy by using metaphors makes the visitors have to think and work too hard which may very well send them away for lack of finding what they were looking for.

Consistency
Navigation should stay the same on every page. If you change the navigation from page to page, users will get disoriented and lose their bearings.

Provide Options
There are various ways to find information on a site.
Take the Grand Tour for example. There's nothing like being a good host. A guided tour is a simple and alternate way to show visitors around a site by placing a next button at the bottom of the page. But some visitors like their independence and autonomy. They may like to use a site search engine to look for a specific keyword while others may prefer the site's navigation bar. The key is to give them the options so that they can choose the one they feel most comfortable using.

Active Listening
Make yourself available. Your site should not be limited to the "contact us" button alone. Let the user decide how he/she wants to contact you, whether it be by phone, mail, physical address, or fax. And encourage interaction by placing a feedback button on all pages - if they have a comment or a question, they may not go through the laborious exercise of finding their way back to the home page to contact you.
Give them the possibility to initiate contact by covering all your bases on all pages.

A Clear Path
Your website should be your ambassador of good and friendly behavior. While you can't greet your visitors personally to say "this way please", you can have your navigation scheme designed to do it for you. At Blade, we understand that showing your clients around your site successfully by organizing the content effectively is crucial to your site's success.

Contact Blade to develop your navigation or to rethink your existing one.

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