Purpose of navigation of website is to allow users an easy access to the content that they are searching for. If user wants to visit from one page to another, he or she must follow a sequence that is facilitated by the navigation system. If the sequence is haphazard, it could lead to frustration. The user in that case would simply leave the site.
If this happens, there goes your potential customer. All you get is an aborted sale and a lost customer.
A navigation system must enable the user to find out
• Where they are now in your website
• What should they do to reach some other page
If your website is only a few pages, you can simply post the links to those pages and that would be enough. But if you host a lot of content, not only it should be organized but also easily reachable.
Objectives of a navigation system is to provide the user with indicators of location and control over the browsing.
You must remember that coming can enter at any page of your site from outside and it is not necessary that he would start his journey from your home page. Wherever they might land in, they must be able to orient themselves quickly. This is made possible by location indicators.
This information must be present on every page of the site, in the same place and in the same style. This can be achieved very easily for small websites by naming the pages and using some different color or background where you have put the name.
Doing this on individual pages is difficult for the bigger sites But this can be easily done with use of breadcrumbs.
Breadcrumbs are series of hierarchical links that you have used to go from page to page within a section. For example if you are in article section of a website and category "wealth management", the breadcrumbs might appear like
Home>Articles>Wealth Management.
Breadcrumbs is like a trail of the path you have followed. Each element in the breadcrumb is a link to that section or subsection.
Use of breadcrumbs allows the user to directly go back to the main section page or another sub section without following the same trail. breadcrumbs also show the context of the page being viewed and its relation to a section or sub-section.
They serve both as locator and navigational control.
Navigation is important part of a good website. If navigation on your website is not good, you make sure that nobody navigates your site, even after arriving there.
Arun Pal Singh is an internet marketing consultant and web author who runs website http://www.homeforprofits.com to help budding online entrepreneurs with information and ready made products. Visit http://www.homeforprofits.com to find how his ebooks, softwares, audios, website building material, traffic strategies and training videos and information can provide the leverage that your business needs to grow and expand.
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Arun Pal Singh is a successful doctor, marketer and writer.
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