Guiding Web Users: Tips for Better Web Design Navigation

by Ellen Foster

As a Web designer, you should do everything you can to make a visitor feel welcomed and oriented on your pages. It’s your job to create a network of information that’s organized in a way that your visitor can easily intuit. One of the best ways to enhance usability is to offer users a network of navigation buttons that’s consistent and predictable.

Web Design and Tunnel Vision

By nature of the Web medium, only a small portion of a site is visible to your visitor at any one time. This can cause a tunnel vision effect, but if your visitor feels like she’s got a reliable road map, it doesn’t have to be scary. “Back” and “forward” buttons usually aren’t enough. The “back” and “forward” buttons on the browser tool bar can take the visitor away from the Web site as opposed to moving to the next page of a long article spanning several Web pages on the current Web site. It’s not always clear if hyperlinks at the bottom of the page connect to the next page in a sequence or will take a visitor to a disparate section of the Web site. Sometimes advertisements blend in as well, and the user can move off the Web site entirely. What’s a good solution?

Web Designers Bring on Button Bars

By adding “next” and “previous” page buttons on a clearly visible tool bar, the visitor will be able to move through sequential information in the intended order if they so chose. Button bars help reveal the Web design’s information layout and provide visual organizational logic to the visitor who’s entered a site via a hyperlink as opposed to a home page. Consider designing your pages with a row of button graphics on the top and bottom of your pages to help readers move easily throughout your Web site.

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About the Author

Ellen Foster is a freelance writer and teacher. She has taught students aged five to forty-five.

Posted at 11:08 AM on February 19, 2007

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