Web Site Navigation

Part 2 of 4

» Avoid My Newbie Mistake!

In the first incarnation of Boogie Jack's I used to provide a link to every page from every page. It was easy to navigate, but as my site grew larger it quickly became a big chore just to add one new page. You can learn from my mistake and get it right from the beginning, rather than having to redesign out of necessity as I did. I could have built a menu using frames and only had to update the menu frame, but I have good reasons for staying away from frames. More on that at the end of this page.

» A Better Way

After that mistake I created what I called jumpstations. Jumpstations are catagorized sub-indexes to the content relative to that jump station. For example, the Web Design Tutorials index is the jumpstation you used to find this tutorial. When I add a new HTML tutorial, I only have to update the main Web Design Tutorials jumpstation.

In some area's I've also put a "next page" link to the next page in a particular content circle. Using this page for an example, it is part of a 4-part tutorial on site planning, so each page is linked to the next page to make it easy for my visitors to go on to the next tutorial without backtracking to the jumpstation.

All the main jumpstation indexes are listed at the bottom of each page so at any point you can jump to another area of my site without backtracking. After I redesigned that first site, folks were never more than one to three clicks away from what they're looking for even though I had over 500 pages of content!

Your guests will appreciate the ease of navigation you provide and will be more inclined to explore more of your content - if you offer quality and original content. If you don't have quality, original content, little else will help you retain visitors.

Note: An even better way to provide navigation is using server side includes (SSI). I use SSI on all my sites now. I can change one file on my site and completely change the look, or change another file and add a new jumpstation to every single page. You can learn more about SSI at my members site [ More Info ], or from my book, Web Site Design Made Easy.

» Home Page Link

At the very least, always have a link to your home page (index) on every page of your site. You have no control over what page someone else may link to within your site, or which page a search engine returns in search results. If someone arrives at a page that doesn't have a home link it may look like the page is a part of the site that linked to it. Even if they realize your page isn't part of the site they came from, many newbies won't know to look at the address line and modify it to get to your home page if they want to explore more. You will lose visitors without a link home on every page.

» Another Good Link Idea

For the most part, I also like to keep my links in the same set up from page to page. It keeps things simple for your guests. Once you get it set up the way you want you only need to copy and paste for your other pages. Easy! And your guests quickly become familiar with the way your site is arranged so it aids in their navigation and enjoyment.

» Test Those Links!

Be sure to test all of your links before going public with your site. You don't want your first email to be complaints about this link or that link not working. Speaking of email, if you want to receive letters from your guests you should also include your contact link on every page. Someone may want to write and tell you that you're the coolest cat since Felix, but if there isn't a contact link on the page they are on, they may well just move on rather than to hunt for it -- and you may never get that ego boost we all love!

» A word about frames...

Do you know that there is a large percentage of surfers who hate frames? There even used to be I Hate Frames web rings and anti-frames clubs, though I don't know if they still exist. The dislike for them still does exist though, so if you're building a framed site, you may want to consider an option for those who don't care for frames by offering a non-frame version on your index page.

You'll also have trouble getting listed or getting a good ranking with some search engines when you use frames, since some search engines don't follow links within frames or even catalog them at all. Frames also take away screen real estate and not everyone has a big monitor. In short, you should have a very good reason for using frames.