Step 5 WEB SITE DESIGN Plan The Structure and Navigation
The more web pages your site has, the harder and more confusing site navigation may become. It is essential to organise your web pages into a logical order, and to allow visitors to know whereabouts they are on your site at any given time. It is a good idea to not have any pages more than 3 clicks from the Home Page.
It can be compared to a tree, with a main branch, sub-branches and twigs.
The illustration below shows an example of a simple 4 tier site.
The main branch is the Home Page, also known as the index page.
The pages in the 2nd tier should be included in the navigation bar. This example has About Us, Main Products page, Services, Subscribe (to a free newsletter), Links and Contact Us.
The 3rd tier may or may not be included in the navigation bar. This example has 2 separate Product pages that are linked to the Tier 2 Products page with text links, plus 2 action pages that appear after a subscriber has submitted the subscribe to the newsletter form - one if successful, and one if not.
The 4th tier is the ordering page.
Decide what pages you will need. Map this out on paper to start, to ensure all your pages are included.
Include a Site Map for visitors, if there are a lot of pages. Many people will visit that page first, to see what your site is about.
Some pages should not be included in the Site Map, including action pages – eg when a visitor successfully subscribes to your newsletter, the next page they see would be a Thank You page.
Page Length
Keep this in mind when deciding on your pages. Not everyone likes scrolling through long pages to find the information they need. Attention spans vary, and visitors also like to know whereabouts in a document they are. Long pieces of text can be broken up by either dividing up into several pages, or dividing the one page into sections, using headlines and anchors. Attach an anchor to each headlined section, and list the sections at the top of the document, linking each to its relevant headline.
Step 5 Web Site Design Home < Go to > Web Site Design Web Site Appearance
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