One of the primary
implications of a well-organized, good website is to keep your visitors on the
website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for
personal use, which is the minority. For example, a portfolio website would
want to be visited and have its contents viewed by those who would be
interested in that topic. For companies and internet businesses, your website
certainly aims to provide product information, to make sales, or something somewhat
similar. However, most individuals prefer visually captivating designs, so on
and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put
himself/herself in the other people’s shoes:
You need to understand how a visitor to the website might think, what
they might want to do and how they are going to react to the information on
your site. How can you keep your
visitors engaged on your site? Navigation!
As I have previously said,
a web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think. Consider the following:
Situation A: A website
with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks to target page), well planned in terms of placement, and design.
Situation B: A website with poor navigation (takes forever
for the visitor to reach his/her target page), hard-to-read navigation fonts,
and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.
In Situation A,
a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For
example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the
products sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation
with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page. The visit to this site would be an enjoyable
one and the visitor would look forward to visiting again in the future. Perhaps they would even take the time to
share your site information with their friends.
As for Situation B,
a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more
information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful
font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation
bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to
be found, (example: home > about > products > product image >
etc…[a few more clicks] > product information ). Your visitor would probably have left your
site LONG before they got through all those clicks!
What do we learn from
this simple analogy? In both situations,
wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more
rewarding ergo better? Take the time in
your site preparation to make sure your navigation is understandable and easy
to use. You will find that your site
will be much more productive!
QUOTE TO CONSIDER
THOUGHTFUL GEM
"Regardless of where you are going,
make sure your path is straight."
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