Guiding your readers carefully through your website is an important factor in the usability of your site.  It is something you must consider carefully when you are first working on a new website.  Changing your mind about navigation further down the line can be a costly and time-consuming decision.  Without successful navigation, a site can lose all sense of structure and organisation.  There are two main choices when it comes to picking the perfect navigation: whether to go horizontal or vertical.

Horizontal Navigation

This is the form that a lot of web designers seem to favour.  It looks neater and frames the website beautifully.  However, its obvious limitation is that it can only be as wide as your website so you have a limited space for extra options down the line.  However, this problem can be solved by using dropdown menus.

Vertical Navigation

As opposed to horizontal, vertical navigations offer the option to have unlimited menu items down the side of your page, making it an attractive option for companies with many different departments and sections.  However, this can look quite unattractive and create a lengthy website where people need to scroll down for miles before reaching the option they require.

What to Include

Your primary navigation should usually revolve around:

• A home page
• An ‘about us’ page
• A ‘contact us’ page

Though you may require many more options for your company.  Remember that a lot of your users won’t necessarily land at your homepage first of all so it’s important to have simple navigation where users can easily find their way back to the homepage.  A common way of achieving this is to link your company logo at the top of each page to the homepage. 

Talk to Your Designer

If you’re hiring a professional designer, make the most of them!  They will be able to give you insightful advice on how best to structure your navigation.  Be sure that you are absolutely certain about your navigation before your designer sets to work on the website.  Doing so will make the job simpler for them and less costly for you.