How to Create an Effective Navigation Structure for Your Site - Part 2Written by Herman Drost
Searching for information on Web has recently become like a mine field. You find site you want, only to be greeted by pop-ups when you enter, pop-ups when you are on site and pop-ups when you leave. Other sites use a flash introduction, make you wait several minutes (which feels like hours), until page finishes loading. Heck, you just want to find information as swiftly as possible without having to watch out for these mine fields. A fast and simple navigation structure is essential for a successful web site. Visitors must have a good experience at your site, if you want them to return. How to design your navigation structure 1. Sketching it out. Part 1 of this article (www.isitebuild.com/navigation), discussed different navigation styles and a navigation action plan. Now let's begin sketching out your site. Take one sheet of paper, draw a circle in middle – this is subject of your homepage. From there, draw branches, which have more ideas about your topic. If any topics are related in a more definitive way, create another branch off current idea branch. Within minutes, you will see your web site develop into a dynamic sketch. You might find that a standard sheet of paper is not enough to contain all your thoughts. Use more paper, create more branches, and keep ideas flowing. Once you have sketched out your site, use separate sheets of paper for each web page. Make sure you define a heading for each page and decide how it links to other pages. This exercise will help you to decide how you want visitors to navigate through your web site. 2. Which navigation style? This could be a navigation bar across top, a navigation bar on left (the two most common styles), or an image map (an image divided into separate links to other pages). If you use graphical icons or other graphics instead of text, then include text links elsewhere on your site. This is because some people browse with their graphics turned off and this technique allows them to still see and use links. 3. What colors should you use? If you have a dark background, with dark graphical icons or text, your links will be invisible. When using rollovers (links that change color when you move mouse over them), be careful that color of changed link will not disappear, in case your visitor wishes to return to that link.
| | Route to a Publicity BonanzaWritten by Marcia Yudkin
Inc. magazine is currently in process of judging sites for its annual small business Web award winners. Since I was a judge last year, I thought I'd offer some observations on how and why to enter your Web site for prestigious awards like this.First, there were less than 800 entrants in six categories. If we eliminate entrants that were clearly not ready for serious consideration (rampant misspellings, garish color schemes, unfunctional links, no business focus), you may have had a one in 50 chance of winning -- and much, much higher odds in certain categories. Second, it's essential to read entry instructions carefully. Every question or item asked for in instructions is there for a reason, and you run risk of disqualification if you don't provide all requested information. In case of Inc. awards, some excellent sites were removed from running because they did not answer questions asked in entry procedure. Even after being e-mailed for more information, they still did not address questions. I couldn't tell whether they did this because answers might not have placed them in a favorable light or because they had a cavalier attitude toward judging and thought they could set their own terms for competition. Third, for a Web site award, make sure you don't schedule a site upgrade during judging period. This happened in more than one instance, believe it or not. A couple of companies that might have won were eliminated from running because their sites weren't available at all during week that judges were viewing finalists. Inc. bent over backwards to give sites a second chance when judges complained they couldn't access some finalists. Even so, this factor knocked a couple of promising candidates out of picture.
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