Site Navigation

Site navigation is the means by which a site visitor gets from one part of your site to another. Good navigation is logical, and intuitive - it makes sense and the user has a feeling of being able to find what they need even if they have never been there before.

You can be creative with website navigation, if you can still have it make sense. If you have to choose between creativity and function though, choose function! A cool looking site gets left in a hurry if the user cannot figure out how to find what they want, fast.

I build sites using a template method - I create a page, usually the home page, and from that, I build all the interior pages. This means that my navigation is the same throughout the site. People like that. They like only having to figure things out once.

This also means that my navigation serves as my site outline. I know many people who recommend that you map out your site ahead of time, and that you write an outline. I never do, because the method I have of building a site allows me to do that while I am creating my site navigation.

Usually I'll have three categories of stuff -

• Standard site information, that pertains to how you use this site. You can see all that in the horizontal blue bar above - it has the Home page, the About page, etc.  
• Content Links, which are the reason people come to this site. The meat and potatoes of the information that I am offering. I usually put all that in the left sidebar. I do this because that is the FIRST place people look for solid information. This allows them to find it rapidly, right where they expect it.  
• Peripheral Links, which may go off site, or they may contain ads, or other information which is relevant, but not the primary reason why people come to my site. I like to put them either at the bottom on the left, or on the right, or occasionally, at the very bottom of the site. In this site, you can see that I have put them in the right sidebar.  

This is not a right or wrong way to do it, this is just how I do it most of the time, just because it is the simplest way to organize site links so that they are simple, intuitive, and fast to build. Doing it this way saves me time, because it also allows me the flexibility in the sidebars to put in whatever I need, without having to change the layout if I add more stuff.

You'll notice that top horizontal bar is limited in space. So if I put many links there, I'd run out of space.

By using the sidebar, I can outline my site as I build it. I think about what my site needs to do, and approximately how much stuff I have to put on it before I design my layout. Then I think about how I can organize that information so that it makes sense to the user, and so that it is logical for me to create the content.

If I have a lot of content, then I create category links on my home page.

If I have 50 pages or less of content, I may just put individual page links down the left side.

Either way, when I build my template, I put in link names for those. Then I write the content for the home page. I do this before I replicate the interior pages, for a specific reason. Often, when I write the home page content, I'll think of a few more things to put in those links. Better now than after I replicate it! Then I format the home page, and add in all the other things like the Googles (which I always put in the templates since I have an existing account), and anything else I want to show up on every page.

Then, I put in the links to the link names that I wrote in earlier. Links before pages, remember?

After that, I start replicating pages, making sure that the link names and the page names are the same. My site is roughed out that fast. I'll usually go in and write in my page titles and delete the home page contents right away. Then over the next few days, I work my way through, one page at a time, until all the pages have content on them. If I need more navigation options deeper into the site, I'll come up with a standard way to do that, which is obvious and predictable, and which I use throughout the entire site.

After the content is in place, I upload the site and test it. If you have a link checker, you can run one at this point. Make sure the links are all functioning, then register with the search engines if it is your first site, or link it in with an active site if you already have some websites.

Navigation can make or break a site. I have come into many sites that had no obvious way of getting anywhere beyond the home page. It is an amazingly common malady!

Don't let your site be one that people click out of because they can't figure out what you had in mind when you created the navigation links!