What Makes a Good Website Navigation?

by Cybernet NY A Digital Agency

Navigation is an often overlooked yet critical element of a website. It gives a high-level overview of what your visitors can expect to find on your site (which also happens to be a good SEO practice). It also helps visitors orient themselves so they can browse the site effortlessly and perform quick actions such as viewing their cart or searching the website.

Because navigation plays such a vital role, it must be carefully designed. As the website owner, you must hire a reliable web design company in NYC to ensure that your website navigation is designed so that visitors can get the most out of it. But what does good website navigation look like anyway?

Prominent Logo

Your brand logo serves as its digital face. It represents you on your website and other platforms such as social media, internet forums, email signatures, etc. As a result, the logo is critical in establishing brand recognition. To boost your logo's brand-building potential, it must be appropriately positioned, sized, and spaced in the website's header. Make sure to link it to the home page.

Sticky Headers

To avoid overwhelming your visitors with content that reads like pages from a magazine or newspaper, have your designer break them into segments with plenty of white space in between. This can make the web pages quite long. That is not a problem, though. Your visitors will gladly comb through the information you share as long as it is relevant and valuable. The problem is the time it takes to scroll back to the top after absorbing all the information, especially if they are using a smartphone to view the site. This problem can be solved by using a sticky header. It keeps the logo in a nice place and the navigation links accessible and does not detract too much from the main content.

Highlighted Pages

It is always helpful to let your visitors know what page they are on, even if you are building a small website. Although the top of the page may provide hint

s about their whereabouts, a visible indicator in the navigation would give a more instant reference point. And the faster they figure out where they are, the more areas of your site they can visit.

Recognizable Icons

In web design, iconography can be pretty valuable. You can have your web designer in Long Island combine it with labels to visually communicate or explain what the point is all about. Your designer can even use icons instead of text labels as stand-alone elements. However, make sure to only use universally recognizable icons in the navigation menu — for example, a shopping bag for viewing the cart and magnifying glass for searching the site.

Conclusion

Visitors will have a tough time finding information and conversion points on your site if you do not have good website navigation. Adding a row of navigation links at your website's top (or side) will not do. Take the time and effort to design your navigation so that it aids in content discovery and user movement throughout your site.