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/

Google always come up with some design or layout changes to improve Search Experience. This time, the navigation bar present on the top of homepage and search result page is redesigned and the bar will show your name instead of the email ID. The redesigned navigation bar is having the same navigation links like Web, Images, Videos, Maps, News, Shopping, Gmail and More on left side, but the right side of the bar is changed. Earlier the right side of the bar was showing iGoogle, Search Settings and Sign In links, but now only Sign In and a settings icon is there.

Note: Redesigned navigation bar is available on Google.com only.

You can sign in using Google account by clicking on the “Sign In” link. The settings icon will show you options like “Search Settings, iGoogle and Privacy” without signed in. Once you will sign in with Google account, your name will appear on the right side of the bar and email ID will be visible only after clicking on the name. You can browse the list of subscribed services from “Settings Icon ==> Account Settings” which is available in the right most of the bar.

The redesigned bar is giving Google homepage and SERP much cleaner and improved look. What is your opinion on that? Share your thoughts on the new redesigned navigation bar of Google.

Auto highlight node to show where the user is on the web site. Sothink Tree Menu can automatically display the highlighted node linking to the current page in the browsers.

Introduction:

In the above tree menu, you can see that the node “Overview” is highlighted by menu font and bold style. That is because, through the analysis of tree menu, the link URL of node “Overview” is the same with “index.htm” you are visiting.

Steps:

Click Global Settings > Highlight in Tasks panel and check “Auto highlight current node” option.
The highlighted node is the same as the selected node of mouse out state when the highlight function takes efect; the highlighted node is the same as selected node of mouse over state when the mouse moves over highlighted node.