Every hour web users are landing on various web pages in order to meet their requirements along with having a user-friendly interface to cater for their needs. Web developer, has to cover all the aspects that can drive users to the website. Supporting navigation must be an important priority for designers, for only those few websites can succeed when their users can efficiently find the content they are interested in. Consistent and intuitive website navigation helps in endowing flexibility to users that will simplify their navigating procedure. And when it comes to effective navigation, sometimes the tiniest aspect creates a great difference.
Table of Contents
There are various reasons why human beings consider using the web as navigation. One is the habitual uniformity between gradually displaying new screens of content and shifting to a new virtual location. In both cases area of view changes with successive clicks. Another is that humans tend to apply their wayfaring skills from the physical world to the digital arena of information.
While working on a website, expectation gets higher when it comes to navigation, but unfortunately not every other website is able to render that perfection and ease. The user must get familiar with the website once he/ she lands on it, and the designer must ensure that where the particular link will lead the user and what they are searching for. Curating a solid website navigation system is the most significant aspect of designing a website.
The following are some characteristics of an effective web navigation system:
1. Productive Navigation Planning:
Always begin with the process of website navigation from the perspective of the user. Detect all the errors and malfunctions at the early stage of design.
2. User-Friendly Language:
Yet another important aspect one has to consider while creating a navigation system is the use of language. A web designer must be thorough with the targeted audience and curate user-friendly language for the website.
3. Experiment with the strategy:
Do not always stick to one plan and follow the spectrum, try to inculcate new ideas and trials to analyze the response from users.
4. Strong Base of Primary Navigation:
Primary navigation should always be consistent, else the user will get confused within your website and there is fat chance that he/she will shift to the alternatives.
Navigating websites is often a frustrating process, website visitors despite their widely varying and individual information-seeking needs, must contend wrangle with static, general-purpose link structures that have been set in place by website owners. Because many visitors tend to browse for the same content, they are individually repeating the same navigation activity. Although strategic attempts are being made to improve website navigation design by tapping into the insight of crowd. The main issues regarding web navigation are approaches that suffer from maintenance, usability, and user interface integration issues.
Let’s delve into some of the major approaches that must be taken care of and rectified when the need for user-friendly web navigation arises.
1. The description is the Key to Interaction
Be descriptive about what the website wants to convey while being aware of not stuffing information into the site. Navigation that imbibes key phrases is likely to develop a strong relationship with users as well as a search engine. Descriptive labels in navigation design provide a trail of relevance to the search engine. As the navigation bar is the most eminent portion of the website, users can easily communicate if it describes the synopsis of the business.
2. Detect the Need of Format Based Navigation
There are plenty of websites that showcase the navigation labels in formats such as videos, photos, white paper, etc. Users always search for answers and information regarding their query, thus format-based navigation might not be a beneficial attempt to tackle the need of website visitors.
3. Optimize the Use of Drop-Down Menu
An effective navigation menu is key to the enhanced user experience on a website. When a user visits a website, they have a goal to get some particular information. And it is the responsibility of the website owner to help the users achieve the information as efficiently as possible. An optimized drop-down menu could be the best approach to accomplish this objective. It is imperative to you ensure that the drop-down menu is clutter free, incorporated with creative icons or images, and adumbrated by borders or shadows. These little aspects will allow the drop-down menus to be easy-to-understand as well as aesthetic to look at.
4. Limit the Items in the List
Try not to load the website with hundreds of links and the menu with loads of options on the home page itself. When users are welcomed with innumerable choices in the menu, such a situation can generate hiccups in the process of navigation. Stuffing of information also dilutes the authority of the homepage in the search engine.
5. Standardize the Navigation Order
According to the serial position effect, it has been proven that a person tends to remember the first and the last thing mentioned in the series. If the elements of the list are not placed in order, the user will not be able to differentiate between the retainable and relevant subjects. Thus it becomes necessary to curate a standardized order for the wen navigation in order to provide an interactive exploration to the user.
The navigation interfaces of most websites are static and are designed to appeal to the average visitor, giving equal weight to a wide range of possible information-seeking scenarios. The individual website visitor, who has a very specific need, is forced to adapt the navigation path in order to reach the arbitrary link structures set in place by website owners. Such monotonous interaction with the website develops a sense of boredom within the user that can prove to be fatal for the website’s productivity. Thus it becomes essential to create user-friendly website navigation to grab the intellect of website visitors.
