A rich and successful website is the well balanced amalgamation of many sophisticated characteristics like fantastic graphics, cool animation, rich and engaging content. But the most significant of all is the process of designing a proper web site navigational mechanism , providing a diverse surfing experience to the visitor thus reducing the tendency to switch and drift to other web sites.
Generally ,in cases of huge web sites having loads of web pages and information, ambiguity is the main problem area for a new user. And if a visitor finds it very confusing to get the required information within the set time constraints,there are greater chances of him moving to other greener pastures. A web site which is designed based on the fine policies of web designing will surely stands out in the world of digital information.
Conventional Navigational System
The web designing practices have undergone drastic changes counting from the time of inception. Still,the main focus lies in choosing the right strategies for site navigation. The web pages will be a good combination of flashy graphics and colors along with relevant content. The layout and coding practices have also changed over time.
The typical navigational menus are as follows:
Textual links:
Menus can be textual links or embedded links. Links are unique pointers that take us to another page. The main page of the site or the home page should be designed in such a manner that it should be very aesthetically pleasing and pixel perfect. At the same time,it should also stick to low bandwidth making the page to load faster and search engine friendly by well optimized digital graphics.
Graphical links:
Now a days, a graphical user interface have images or animation as links. Graphical links makes a site very attractive but should be used in a minimalistic manner. Putting too much of graphics and animation in a web page makes it too loud and clustered.
Site map:
A site map is another web accessing tool which provides easy navigation guides to other internal web pages through hierarchical planning of page. It is one of the fastest ways to traverse large web sites.
What are the things to consider before designing navigational menus?
The wide spread use of web technology has given a boost to web designing and development activities in the past decades. Most of the online web portals of branded business houses and online small scale stores follow similar polices for web development and maintenance. While going deeper in to the realms of navigational menu design for a web site,it can be noticed that there are few important things which should be kept in our mind. Following are the few:
Uniformity and consistency:
A huge e commerce website will be having a gamut of web pages which contains large volumes of data and information. There are certain standard rules while uploading a web site online. There should be uniformity in the content and the specified information in all the pages of the site. So,it is very much necessary to maintain a consistency all though the website.
Interactive and User friendly design:
The user interface and the navigational menus should be very user friendly and interactive,enables the visitors to access information without any hassles. This will help in increased traffic rate and also in retention of existing users.
Transparency and clarity:
The specifications for website interface design should be uncomplicated which adds to the professional touch in interface design. The simple and easy-to-use menus helps in reducing the ambiguity of the users.
Hierarchical layout:
One of the main characteristic of a successful website is the guarantee of easy access to information on all the web pages in the site. There should be stratified layout for the content and design making the site more attractive to the user.
Prioritizing and high lighting the content:
Placing the content according to importance and highlighting the same helps in communicating the goals in a successful manner to the potential client,thus opening new avenues of business growth and profits.
