Navigation Types

Navigation is the most important part of your web site. Clear, consistent navigation allows your clients to view your web site with ease. It is important that the navigation does not shift around when you move to different pages on your site. The look of your navigation can be a simple as text that you can click on to change pages, or it can be a changing graphic rollover image....also available with with sub-level menus, etc.

Global Navigation is the navigation that is common to all of the pages on your site. Global navigation should always be in the same exact location on each page. We break our Global Navigation up into two categories:
• Global Business Navigation (for general information about the company such as...About Us • Partners • Links • Login • Contact Us • etc...)
• Global Site-Specific Navigation (for detailed information about the company services such as...Home • Services • FAQ • etc...) Business and Site-Specific Navigation types may be mixed together, however we feel that separating them in some manner is a better design practice.

Local Navigation is navigation that is only available on certain pages of your site, usually defining a group of pages that go together. This group of pages would all have the same local navigation, allowing you to quickly see the other pages that are related to that section. Local navigation does not replace global navigation, it is added in addition to the global navigation.

Hypertext Links are just text links, that when clicked will take you to another page, or will jump you to a different location on the same page. Hypertext Links are not considered part of the navigation of your site, however properly placed hypertext links can add to the usability, and enhance the navigation on certain pages.

Navigation Locations

Top Navigation usually runs horizontally across the top of your web page. We like to use this as the area for Global Business Navigation when possible.

Left Navigation lines up vertically down the left side of the web page. Usually "Home" is at the top and then followed by other Global Site-Specific navigation.

Right Navigation lines up vertically down the right side of the web page. If any navigation is used on the right, it would typically be Local Navigation only, or just hypertext links.

Bottom Navigation is usually a duplicate of your global navigation done in simple hypertext horizontally along the bottom of each web page. This provides a method of switching pages if the user is scrolled down, and is also helpful for search engines to find the links to each page.

If you need a website designed or redesigned, please check out our Website Development Packages.