Planning your Navigation

A navigation bar is a collection of links to all the major pages of your site. Your navigation system should look and behave the same way on every page. Navigation helps visitors know exactly what's on your site, and makes it easy to get the information they want quickly.

Start by Planning your Pages

If your web site is well structured, it will be easy to design a clear navigation system. Divide your information into your most important areas, and then divide those into even more specific sections. You now have a hierarchy of information that will be your framework.

The best advice is to keep it simple! A simple system makes it easy for people to find what they're looking for. Don't forget that web sites have a tendency to grow. In your planning, think ahead and allow for future sections to be added.

Navigation Bars

A navigation bar can be a collection of graphics, an image map, or straight text. They can be placed at the top, bottom or side of each page.

An attractive graphical navigation bar can really enhance the look of your pages and your site. Try to keep your graphics sleek and functional. Most visitors will be coming for your content, and not to see a navigation banner that takes a third of the screen.

Image maps are graphics that allow you to link to other documents from different areas, or 'hotspots', in the picture. Check out MapEdit for a easy freeware program to make image maps.

Many web users prefer text-only browsers, or graphical browsers with images turned off. For this reason it is standard to have a combination of graphical and text navigation bars.