Web Designer Blog

A good navigation would mean that you have a user-friendly website. And if you have a user-friendly website, expect that your online visitors would be comfortable browsing your site and would definitely come back for more visits. Come to think of it, where would you like to stay longer? In a website where you have to click on the sitemap every time your browse or in a website where you can easily find what you are looking for with just a few clicks?

Here are great navigation tips on how to make your website design user-friendly:

A clean website with a good navigation is always a plus. You can enhance the look of your website with graphics but make sure that you focus on your content and use a lot of white space. If you are to create links to a content site, you can use contrasting colors.

Do not clutter links. Make sure that you organize your links and they are all working.

Dead links can give an impression of sloppiness and haphazard work? If you have too many links, you can categorize them accordingly in drop down menus. You can also use flyouts links for your main categories.

Create a navigation system that is consistent and clean-cut. If you have your links on a drop down menu under one category, then you must have the same navigation with the rest of your site categories.

Your website design should accommodate a large number of links as you may have to add links in the future. As you add more pages to your site, then you need to add more space for additional links.

Categorize your website content in sections so you can gather up related links. You can use section home pages for certain categories or sections.

Your main links should be kept together.
This way, your visitors can know what your website covers at just one glance. The links to your site’s main sections should convey what your website is all about. If it is a business website- your main links should show what products or services you have to offer.? Links can be placed on navigations bars. They are often listed on the right side of the menu bar. You can also line them up neatly, just below your header.

In creating text links for your website, have it short and simple. The words should precise enough to know what that page would contain once clicked.

If you think a link is important to your reader or if you want them to go to a certain section in your site, you can make this link as a feature link of your site. You can have a different front color for this special link, boxed it up or have it in bold font.

Article source: http://business.ezinemark.com/

I believe the navigation of a website should always be simple. However, if a website has many pages and sub pages, the thought of navigation simplicity goes out the window. This is where drop down menus come into play. A good and well executed drop down menu can make navigating a large site easy for the user. While drop downs make site navigation easy, sometimes they can seem difficult to implement, but the solutions listed below are all a breeze to set up, especially since most of them are built on jQuery or MooTools.

Superfish

jQuery SuckerFish Style

Smooth Navigational Menu

Animated Drop Down Menu with jQuery

droppy

Simple Drop Down Menu for jQuery

UvumiTools Dropdown Menu

MooTools Drop Down Menu

MenuMatic

Drop-Down Menu with jQuery

Simple CSS vertical menu Digg-like

Drop Down Tabs

JavaScript Dropdown Menu with Multi Levels

jQuery Multi Level CSS Menu #1

Having a clean and well-structured website navigation is key in designing an effective user interface. Drop-down menus are great for sites that have multiple levels of content hierarchy. The typical design pattern of a drop-down menu is that when a user hovers over the parent navigation item, a submenu of navigation items appea.

In this collection are many different types of drop-down menus used in websites all over the web for your navigation design inspiration.

Here are some related collections regarding site navigation that you may also be interested in:

Carreras Con Futuro

This drop-down menu’s design embodies the hand-drawn theme of the website.

Converse

Converse has a grunge-styled drop-down menu that has a cloth-like texture with frizzy edges.

Bern

This rough grunge style website has an edgy drop-down menu that complement the look-and-feel of the website’s general aesthetics.

Ski Alpine

This drop-down menu highlights the attention to detail that the site designer has.

Noizi Kidz

This navigation is bright and shaped unconventionally.

Famous Cookies

This drop-down navigation menu showcases the yummy cookies that the store makes available to its hungry patrons.

Boden

Each menu item has a different font and the drop-down menu is very clean.

Navigant Consulting

The colours used on this site work together like players of a football team.

Fall For Tennessee

Fall for Tennessee has a horizontal drop-down menu that slides out to the right hand side. The menu items that have a drop-down submenu have a small arrow next to them to indicate that they can be expanded.

Mozilla

This is a simple yet sleek drop-down menu on the Mozilla.

From a design standpoint, however, drop-down menus are an excellent feature because they help clean up a busy layout. If structured correctly, drop-down menus can be a great navigation tool, while still being a usable and attractive design feature.

navigation bar