A well-designed website has many facets: gorgeous graphics, cool animations, drop-down menus, and of course, relevant content. Another important feature, often overlooked, is a good, solid navigation scheme.I review many sites every week. A confused or non-existent method of finding
content contained within site is a clear indicator of a budget or home-grown site. A well-designed website is a great equalizer—who would know that your company has only 5 staff when your website is slick and your customers can find your products with ease? On other hand, a site that makes finding order page a hunt for buried treasure, will urge visitor to leave your site and buy elsewhere. Minimally, it sends a strong signal that your company is unprofessional, and purchasing from you could be risky.
When considering best navigation plan for your website, first make a list of most important, or highest-level, divisions of your site's content. For example, if your site promotes your services, plus sells a product, has helpful information and articles, and provides a demo of a product or service, you may want to arrange your menu with these main headings:
Home Order Products Consulting Services Articles Product Demos Company Contact Us
Some of headings listed above may be further subdivided, such as a list of articles, or a list of available product demos. There are many examples of menu systems that drop-down, or cascade, to reveal more selections within a category.
Your site will, no doubt, have pages that don't really need to be included in main navigation scheme, but which must be accessible nonetheless. This could include your Terms of Agreement, Privacy Policy, or Additional Links pages. The footer links (the text links normally included at bottom of page) are an excellent location for web pages that are important, but which might clutter your website’s message.
