Site Navigation Design Tips for user friendly Joomla! websites

| 29 June 2010
Posted in Tips and Tricks

Navigation of links on your site plays a big role in how long your visitor stays and explores your site. You can ask yourself this. Do you stay long on web sites which has tons of links on main page? What do you do as soon as you open a web site?

User are coming to your web site to read your content. When they complete the reading your content , They start look around to find any other page that interests them.

Importance of Layout and Navigation

A clean layout and a good navigation and using a lot of white space for your site enhances its looks. Try to keep the focus on your content. Your content must be findable easly. The visitors are focused on your content

Here are a few important tips to make your Joomla! web site more user friendly :

• Prepare your site navigation before designing to prevent cluttering up the site with forgotten links.

• A clean-cut and uniform navigation system is a must.

  
  

• If you have too many links then you should use drop-down menus or flyouts for your main topics. Joomla! users have great resources to use drop-down menus. Most J! templates are supporting drop-down menus by the default. There is also a JED category for the Joomla! Menu System . You can consider visiting that category too

• Having site map or section contents/home pages to help people find what they are looking for with easly. There is JED category for J! Site Maps too. J! has its own category/section system. You can use the core J! content categories or You can use Content Construction Components for Joomla!
  
• The navigation should be flexible as much as possible because you will probably add more pages after you create your web sites. For having a flexible system using drop-down menus or section home pages is a must.

• Keep your main links together as much as possible so that visitors can absorb them at one shot and know what your site conveys about your company. Check out how all our major links appear in our top navigation bar and all related section links are listed in the right hand side menu.

• There is no harm is showcasing important links (or repeated links) that you think might interest the visitor. Small boxes describing the link should look good.

• If you plan to have a graphic intensive site , you can have a separate home (splash) page and put all the links of your major content pages to this splash page. When you have done this, Your home page can have visual effect and your inner content pages can have elaborate navigation structures while focusing on the content.

• Use your navigation space efficiently. Use short and clear in your links so that your visitors know what the corresponding page will contain.