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Member of:
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 IWA
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Website Navigation
When creating your website, you need to remember that your website is just
one of the millions that are on the Internet today. The best websites out
there are those that are easily understood, easy to navigate and which most
closely relate to the topic that they are discussing.
People who surf the 'Net have become quite used to seeing things in a
particular way. The trick in website navigation is ensuring that your
navigation is easy to recognize and familiar to use. Here are some basic
tips to help you lay out your website's pages with your visitor's needs in
mind.
• Try to keep your pages to 50kb or less, including images.
If your page takes more than 8 or 10 seconds to load, it is too big. People
will not wait for it to finish loading and you will lose that potential
visitor.
• Use common names for your page links such as “Home”,
“Contact Us”, and “Help” etc. that are easily recognized and understood. The
easier it is for you visitor to find their way around the longer they are
likely to stay.
• Make use of anchor tags within longer pages that will
allow visitors to return to the top of the page with a simple click. eg.<a
name="top"> would go at the very top of your page and
<a href="#top">go to the
top</a>. As a good rule of thumb, if you can click “page down” key on
your computer more than three times to reach the bottom of the page, it is
probably best to break that page into several, smaller pages.
• If you wish to use media such as Flash, etc. it would be
a good idea to offer regular HTML pages for those that want or need a faster
loading version of your site.
• Ensure you link your site’s logo to your homepage and
ensure you have a regular link on every page of your website back to the
homepage. eg.<a href="index.html"><img
src="images/sitelogo.gif" border="0"></a>
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