A good website navigation is user friendly. It provides menu list with internal link. Here is a complete guide on website navigation.
What is website navigation?
It is a collection of user interface components. The website navigation helps users to find the required content on the site. The major components of website navigation include buttons, menus, copy link text,etc.
Navigation Menu
The navigation menu helps users in website page navigation. The menu list comes with internal links and help in navigating towards different pages in the website.
Sub-navigation
It is also known as local navigation. It is a type of menu with lower-level categories in the site. They increase the discoverability of the content with fewer number of clicks. For instance, if ‘news’ in navigation menu is main navigation, then ‘national news’, ‘international news’ are sub-navigation.
Types of Navigation
There are four main types of navigation. They are structural navigation, associate navigation, utility navigation.
Structural Navigation
It follows the structure of the website (up and down movement). This type of navigation allows people to move up and down the site. It is further divided into local navigation and main navigation.
The main navigation represents pages just below the home page. It provides an overview of the site. It highly targets the first visitors of the site. Therefore, it covers overall information of the site. It is also called primary navigation or global navigation.
Factors governing main navigation
- Size of the site: A large site with a good steady main navigational menu should cover thousands of pages.
- User behavior: Always create main navigation menu based on user needs.
- Objectives: The main navigation menu should include goals and objectives. The recent popular pages should be highlighted here.
Local Navigation
It is used to access the menu located below the main navigation pages. By local, the design means “within a given category”.
Arrangements
The following are the common arrangements of main navigation and local navigation
- Inverted-L: The top accommodates main navigation menu. On the left-hand side, the local navigation menu is locatedas vertical link list.
- Horizontal: Local navigations are represented in the second row under main navigation menu
- Embedded Vertical: The main navigation is presented as vertical menu. The local navigation is present between the main navigation options. Together they form a tree like structure.
Associative navigation
This type of navigation makes connections between different levels of hierarchy (in a site). Here the user can access other topics while reading one. The three main types of associative navigation are contextual navigation, footer navigation and quick links.
Contextual navigation is usually placed near the content. It connects text meaning and related pages. They generally lead to different page types, new content area and new site.
Quick links lead to important content of the site that are not included in main navigation.
Footer Navigation is represented by text links and is located at the bottom of the page. It usually contains supplementary information such as site credits, terms and conditions and copyright information.
Utility Navigation
It connects features and tools that help viewers in navigating through the site. They are not a part of the main hierarchy of the site. For instance, links in the form of search page results.