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Also, you should be very careful about using industry-specific terms. You might be suprised to find out how much of your lingo doesn't make sense to people who aren't familiar with your industry. Carefully evaluate each of your links to make sure you're not using a confusing term.
2. Navigation options need to be kept to a minimum
The second way you can simplify your navigation is to make
amount of options manageable. Visitors tend to get overwhelmed if you give them too many choices. They aren't able to focus. Rather than seeing each individual option, they only see a mass of links.
An additional reason not to include too many links is that you ordinarily shouldn't send visitors in a lot of different directions. If you've established a primary goal for your site (you have, haven't you?), your site should revolve around accomplishing that goal. So it's in your best interest to keep
options down. That way, you're able to steer your visitors in
direction you want them to go.
Keep your navigation menus to 5-7 options or less. That's
max amount you can have without losing your visitors' concentration. Any more than that, and they aren't able to discern an individual choice.
If you find yourself having more than 5-7 options in each of your navigation menus, try to pare them down. It's better to simplify
list and make sure visitors can evaluate everything than to cram everything in when visitors will miss most of it.
If you really need more than 7 links, group
links into a few categories. Although this can still get overwhelming, it helps significantly if you categorize links for visitors. They can latch onto one category and narrow it down from there, rather than having to deal with
whole list at once.
Overall, try to objectively evaluate your navigation from
point of view of a visitor. If you can, get input from people who aren't familiar with your site or your business. They'll be a great resource in helping you determine whether or not your links are confusing or overwhelming.
