Website Design

Which way out?

There are many options available to you for creating a good navigation system on your site. Your navigation should be well-planned, consistent throughout your site, and above all, easy to use.

If you are using images as menu options, you need to make sure they tell the user what they are. For example, a picture of a golden cup may seem obvious to you - that's your awards section! - but to another user it may be baffling. Try adding text titles to your images to make it clear what purpose they serve. And don't forget those ALT tags we talked about before!

It's a good rule of thumb that any page on a website should be available within three clicks from the main homepage. This means you can kiss goodbye to those "Next" buttons that take the visitor through your 400 pages in the order you want. As a surfer, I want to come into your site and see what is available, then pick and choose for myself.

The length of your pages is something to be considered, too. As a general rule, you shouldn't have page content longer than about 3 full-page scrolls. Some pages may need more than this - you will need to take into account the context of information on the page.

If your navigation is provided by links at the top of the page, you should include a "Back to top" link at the bottom of your page.

Make sure that no pages on your site are "dead ends", i.e. you would have to use your browser back button to continue surfing the site. At the very least, your pages should have a link for "Back to the index" or "Return to homepage". Being able to skip from any page to any other section is a big plus point in improving your navigation.

Consider providing a site map for your visitors; this really helps people to find what they're looking for, and may give you some points about the site navigation as well.

Frames

Love 'em or loathe 'em, you can't ignore them. Frames can be very useful indeed for navigation. The big plus is that when you add content to your site, you only have one menu to update instead of all the pages that have the menu. Some people, however, detest framed sites. As the overwhelming majority of browsers now support them, I can't see a reason for this, as long as they are used well. Make sure you check your frames in 800x600 resolution so that you don't have ugly scrollbars within them.

You can provide a no-frames version of your site. Whether you do or not, you should always make sure to use the <NOFRAMES> tag on your frameset pages, otherwise any visitors who don't have a frames-capable browser will just get a blank page or an error message.

Contact

There should always be a way for visitors to get in touch with you from your site.

For commercial sites, this should usually include relevant e-mail addresses, telephone, fax and postal address (this information is required by law in many countries for sites selling via the web).

Personal or non-profit sites should at the very least include a guestbook for visitors to leave comments. An e-mail link is also great. And preferably it should be available at least from the homepage of your site. If you're using navigation menus, why not add it to the list, as well. A feedback form can be a great method for collecting user comments, too.

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