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Keep Your Navigation Consistent!
by: Jamie Kiley
One of the
single most important aspects of effective
navigation is consistency. Why? There's a
simple reason.
Visitors want
familiarity.
They are more
comfortable and more trusting if they know
things are going to remain the same from
page to page. They have a certain sense of
confidence from knowing what to expect.
If a visitor
can quickly become familiar with your
navigation, it's much simpler to actually
navigate. And of course, that's the whole
purpose of navigation, right?
Besides
familiarity, there's a second reason to be
consistent. It helps your credibility.
Consistency in
your navigation helps you present a unified,
cohesive image to your visitors. In other
words, you look polished, well-thought-out,
and on top of things. Your visitors get the
impression that you "have it together".
On the other
hand, if your navigation is inconsistent, it
reflects badly on you and your company.
You'll look disorganized and unprofessional.
Here are 3
ways to maintain consistency in your
navigation:
1. Use global
navigation (which is a set of your main
links that appears on every page of your
site in the same place).
Global
navigation is an absolute necessity. It
ensures that visitors can always get to the
main sections of your website quickly and
easily.
Global
navigation options must be the same on every
page. Many sites resoundingly fail in this
area. Often, the order of the links varies
from page to page, or some links are missing
on certain pages. This confuses even
experienced web users.
2. Keep the
appearance and placement of buttons and
secondary links the same throughout the
site.
I recently ran
across a site that used three completely
different styles of buttons in as many
pages. This variation blew any unified
appearance they hoped to have. It also made
it hard to recognize which graphics were
links and which were not, since there was no
consistently-used symbol for "clickability".
On another
site, secondary navigation options were on
the left on some pages and on the right on
other pages. That's a no-no. Visitors will
never be sure where to look for additional
options, particularly since this site was
visually busy. Don't move links around from
page to page.
Link colors,
button styles, fonts, and placement should
be the same throughout the site. The goal
should be for visitors to instantly
recognize a link when they see it.
3. Stick with
conventional design standards.
In addition to
being consistent within your site, you also
need to be consistent with other sites.
Don't get too far out on the fringe in
trying new things.
If you use a
navigation scheme that's completely
different from what you see on most other
sites, visitors will likely be confused.
Make your navigation look and function like
something visitors will be familiar with
from other sites.
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