One of the most underrated parts of a website is the navigation. Website navigation has high priced realty when it come to your website.. Why? Because your navigation is the foundation of your site - it's how your customers will maneuver through your products or services. If you know me, then you've heard this before, you have three seconds to hook your audience... that's less time than it took me to type this sentence.
In a perfect world each viewer would navigate through your website the same way by taking the same path, however that is not how it works. Each viewer thinks and processes information ina. different way so you want to be sure to keep your entire audience in mind when building out your website navigation.
Let's take a look at the different types of website navigation:
- Header navigation: an organized list of links to web pages
- Megamenu: expandable menu in which pages are linked in a two dimensional dropdown layout
- Sidebar: positioned on the left or right side of the site. It's possible to have dual sidebars as well.
- Footer: contains links to the main pages on your website, shown on every page of your site
- Fat Footer: allow for more links and an easier user experience you can create hierarchal navigation links that appear on a specific page.
- Slim Footer: compact slim footer for the end of the webpage
- Breadcrumbs: secondary navigation that reveals the users location on the website
- Hamburger Menu: three horizontal lines that open up to a sidebar or navigation drawer
When determining your sites navigation and which type of navigation to use it is extremely important to understand your audience. For example, if you have an e-commerce website then you need to have an understanding of how your consumers shop. If you have a service based website you need to use captivating verbiage and a curated navigation with your audience in mind.
Overwhelmed? We're here to walk you through it. One of the first steps of the website process is to create a sitemap and nail down the site navigation and pages. Interested in more? Shoot us an email or book a complimentary call.
xx,
Chase
