Website Navigation refers to the use of navigation menus and hyperlinks
to allow visitors to move from one web page to another. Although
technically, it is possible to create a hyperlink to any page in or outside
of a domain, it is important to adopt a standard, intuitive navigation
approach that won't leave visitors in a state of confusion.
Many web authoring tools provide easy-to-use graphical tools to define
the layout of a website. The diagram below illustrates a simple
website navigation diagram that is comprised of three main sections (i.e.
parents). Normally, hyperlinks to a site's main sections should appear
at the top of each web page, just below the title.
In this particular example, two of the parents each have
"child pages" that contain further details about those website
sections. The two
parent pages normally would include a navigation menu (in the page body) listing each of
their child pages.
When viewing a child page, a menu in the left hand margin,
should normally list each of the siblings (i.e. related pages). All pages in
a website should
include a "Home" button at the top left corner of each page. If visitors
gets lost in the web, they can then return to the home page and begin
drilling down again.
When a web authoring tool like Microsoft's FrontPage 2003 is
used to create a website, the navigation menus are automatically maintained as pages are added, deleted or moved from one location to another. This
saves a great deal of maintenance effort and reduces the chances of "dead links"
occurring.
A website should normally not have more than five or six
main sections (i.e. parent pages). The depth of the website should not be
greater than 5
levels deep. Non-standard links (e.g. shown with a dotted red line) should only be
used on an exception basis.
