A good navigation would mean that you have a user-friendly website. And if you have a user-friendly website, expect that your online visitors would be comfortable browsing your site and would definitely come back for more visits. Come to think of it, where would you like to stay longer? In a website where you have to click on the sitemap every time your browse or in a website where you can easily find what you are looking for with just a few clicks?

Here are great navigation tips on how to make your website design user-friendly:

• A clean website with a good navigation is always a plus. You can enhance the look of your website with graphics but make sure that you focus on your content and use a lot of white space. If you are to create links to a content site, you can use contrasting colors.

• Do not clutter links. Make sure that you organize your links and they are all working. Dead links can give an impression of sloppiness and haphazard work.

• If you have too many links, you can categorize them accordingly in drop down menus. You can also use flyouts links for your main categories.

• Create a navigation system that is consistent and clean-cut. If you have your links on a drop down menu under one category, then you must have the same navigation with the rest of your site categories.

• Your website design should accommodate a large number of links as you may have to add links in the future. As you add more pages to your site, then you need to add more space for additional links.

• Categorize your website content in sections so you can gather up related links. You can use section home pages for certain categories or sections.

• Your main links should be kept together. This way, your visitors can know what your website covers at just one glance. The links to your site's main sections should convey what your website is all about. If it is a business website- your main links should show what products or services you have to offer.

• Links can be placed on navigation bars. They are often listed on the right side of the menu bar. You can also line them up neatly, just below your header.

• In creating text links for your website, have it short and simple. The words should precise enough to know what that page would contain once clicked.

• If you think a link is important to your reader or if you want them to go to a certain section in your site, you can make this link as a feature link of your site. You can have a different front color for this special link, boxed it up or have it in bold font.

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A website is the marketing tool for an online business. Good websites must be attractive and be able to grab the attention of a large number of visitors.

Good website designing is an art that requires knowledge of programming and how your visitor will interact with the website. So make the website user friendly but most importantly make it so that search engines can find you organically. After all, your goal is to compete against the first 10 competitors for your keyword and search engine optimization is how to do this.

The most important rule I follow for a website is the KISS formula. Keep It Simple Silly. Do not lose your visitor with a whole lot of fancy stuff if you want them to find your product or message.

1. What do you want your website to do for you? Design the website according to this question. If all you want is a simple squeeze page then design a simple squeeze page. If you want to convey information then keep it simple and convey that information. Fancy graphics and other distractions are not conveying what you want to your visitor.

2. Planning the web design. Planning on a piece of paper what you want on the web page is important. Doing simple research on other websites on the materials you want to convey to your visitor will give you a feel for how to design your site.

3. Planning your theme and layout for each page is important. Look at your competitors and see if you find their theme attractive. Incorporate ideas from those sites that you know will attract your visitor. Design those ideas into your website.

4. Navigating around your site requires a site map. Remember it is important that your visitor can easily navigate around your site. Implement normal links for moving around and place those links together like an index for your site. It is important that your visitor does not get frustrated while navigating around your site as they will leave or click away.

5. Download time is important. It gets frustrating to the majority visitors if they have to wait for a page to download. Over use of graphics and images will increase download time. Ideally a complete page should not exceed 30KB. This ensures that most visitors will see your whole page in about 5 to 6 seconds at the most.

6. Do not allow your visitor the opportunity to click away on a link on your web site that leaves your domain. It has been proven that you generally have lost that visitor and a potential customer.

Remember it is about presenting the information in an elegant, decorative, user friendly and timely manner. So consider the above tips when designing a website in the future.

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