Your site made easy

When visitors get into your site, for sure, you want to make sure that they will find quickly and easily what they are looking for. if they do not find it fast, chances are they will go on to another site. If your web site is easy to use and understand, these visitors have then tendency to come back again and again.

Using navigation techniques can greatly improve the usability of your web site. This also means user satisfaction and return rates.

One of the fine points in making a site easy to navigate is to have a consistent menu that is on every page. By having this, users can move from each section and from any other section. This way, they would not have to go back to the home page or menu page every now and then.

Keeping the menu in the same location and style throughout your site will ensure that the visitors will quickly recognize how to navigate your site. If you have a different menu on every page, it is possible that they will get confuse and will not comprehend how to navigate your site.

Another useful tool that can be used is a site map. The site map should contain an organized list of all the pages or sections of your site. Your visitors will have the option of going to the site map and clicking directly to the certain page they are looking for. This is way too easy compared to moving around the system and clicking on all categories just to find a specific topic.

There are many buttons, graphics and rollovers that can be used for the menu navigation. But sometimes simple texts can work just as well. Text links are fast to load. Take into consideration those with slow connections and will not wait for a complex navigation to work. Text links will also help them understand the meaning of the links they will go to.

Keep the navigation menu near the top of the web pages. This will ensure that the visitors will be able to see them as soon the page loads. They will be less inclined to do so if they still have to scroll to navigate to other pages of your site.

All in all, simplicity is the key to site navigation. Think of your visitors as the most impatient of all persons. If they do not see what they need immediately, they would not spend much time figuring things out. They would rather go and search another site.