There is a long list of ‘Bad Practices’ that should be avoided when it comes to designing website navigation. Hence, bringing this sequel of ‘The Bad in Website Navigation That You Should Avoid – I’ as it’s required considering all that is bad, in order to have all that is perfect.
Let’s have a quick view on the things to be considered in website navigation that we discussed in the previous blog.
- You shouldn’t use non-standard navigation style.
- Don’t put too many options in the navigation bar
- Don’t use generic labels like ‘Products’ or ‘Services’. Go for descriptive labels that help visitors to know your site better, and help search engines to check the relevancy of your website.
- These labels shouldn’t be too long
- There shouldn’t be more than seven items in the navigation bar
Here are the further check points that you should consider as bad for your website navigation –
Putting not so important links in the primary navigation – It’s not a good idea to keep such links in subsections that doesn’t have to do anything with the visitor requirements.
Website Navigation designed only for large screens – This of course doesn’t work best when website is accessed on any mobile device. Such a design of website navigation doesn’t prove friendly with tablets, smartphones, etc., hence, restricts website’s functionality.
Using too long drop-down menus that don’t fit in the screen – Replacing these long drop-downs with mega menus is the best thing to go for. Because, if websites having too many categories use mega drop-down menus, they will save the visitor from that scrolling exercise. Moreover, you get scope to use tooltips in it in order to provide further details of the listed labels.
Many flyout submenus – Too many fly-out submenus don’t offer good user-friendly experience on mobile devices. It may leave mobile users with no access to some of the pages of your website.
Non-highlighted hypertexted links – Links that are not highlighted won’t help visitors to recognize them. That means all the hypertexts on the website should be easy to recognize. So, making them look a little different than rest of the text – may be by underlining, by making them bold or giving a different color – will suffice the purpose.
Clearly recognizable hypertext helps visitors to reach to the valuable sources of information they may be interested in.
Difference in primary Navigation Bars for each webpage – Doing this, you may want to experiment with website design. But, this inconsistency gonna lead visitors to confusion, which will end up making them uncomfortable to brows your website any further.
These mistakes in website navigation may prove as major obstacle to achieve remarkable user experience as well as search engine rankings. So, go on implementing the improvements wherever you feel needed, and see the changes in your websites analytics.
Enjoy better page rank, great user behavior and amazing traffic on the website!!!
Facebook: Few check points that you should consider as bad for your website navigation –
#BadInWebsiteNavigation, #BadForWebsite, #UnnecessaryLinksInPrimaryNavigation, #NavigationsOnlyForLargeScreens, #TooLongDropDowns, #ManyFlyoutSubmenus, #NonHighlightedHypertexts, #DifferentNavigationBarsForEveryPage
LinkedIn: Mistakes in website navigation may take toll on achieving remarkable user experience, hence, search engine rankings.
Google+: Stay away from bad navigation and enjoy better page rank, great user behavior and amazing traffic on the website.
Instagram: Bad website navigation can become a major reason for visitors to leave the website.
#BadInWebsiteNavigation, #BadForWebsite, #UnnecessaryLinksInPrimaryNavigation, #NavigationsOnlyForLargeScreens, #TooLongDropDowns, #ManyFlyoutSubmenus, #NonHighlightedHypertexts, #DifferentNavigationBarsForEveryPage