The Importance of Your
Website's Navigation
One very important but
often neglected element of a good website design is its navigation system. It is not
enough to simply increase the total number of visitors to your website - you need to have
a well designed navigation system that encourages visitors to browse through the pages,
and helps them to contact you easily to request a reservation. The ease with which
visitors navigate your website is a huge factor in how many lookers convert to bookers.
Poorly designed and implemented navigation will handicap your website, frustrate visitors,
and waste your precious marketing dollars.
Consider the following when you analyze your website's navigation:
Make sure that the most important pages in your website
are the easiest to locate.
Make sure that your navigation, whether text or buttons, is easy to
see, read and use. Remember that not everyone has large bright monitors or good eyesight.
People are most comfortable reading from top left to bottom right so a left side vertical
navigation or a horizontal bar at the top and bottom will be more intuitive than a right
side navigation.
The names of your links need to be clear, concise and
easy to understand, to encourage visitors to click-through.
Make sure your navigation does not change dramatically as the
visitor moves through the site. Provide a
consistent and comfortable experience, not one that is confusing or disjointed.
Make sure that you incorporate a link back to your homepage as part
of the navigation on every page of the website. A surprising number of websites lack this,
to their detriment.
As someone moves through your website, it is important for them to
know where they are. Each page should be clearly titled. People coming in the "back
door" of your website need to know what page they are looking at.
In addition to setting up clear navigation links, it's a good idea
to emphasize important pages of your website by making text hyperlinks. These allow
visitors to easily access areas of your website as soon as they read something that
catches their attention.
The time and energy you put into designing quality navigation for
your website is well worth the effort. Following these "Rules of the Road" will
help ensure that the money you spend driving traffic to your website will not only bring
visitors, but encourage them to stay. |
