"The Desktop Global Marketer" (tm)

   A free on-line newsletter of Sidereal Designs, Inc.,
   for Internet Entrepreneurs, and those who are
   considering becoming one.
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                 April 30th, 2000 

In this issue: "One of the hardest things to get right is
helping people find their way around your web site."


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You may have a great message and a great product, but it's
all for naught if the customer finds it hard to get in the
door. Making your site user-friendly is one of those bits of
marketing infrastructure that's prerequisite to everything
else you're trying to do.

One of the hardest things to get right is helping people
find their way around your web site. The problem is you know
it by heart and they've just parachuted in out the blue with
no clue about where anything is or even what's there. If
they can't figure it out pretty quickly, they'll probably
just go away. Here's a checklist of things to think about to
help you overcome knowing too much.

Home Page

Those first few sentences are all important. Do they tell
the visitor what they'll find on the site? Is the content of
the whole site summarized in a general way on the home page?
Do you tell them what the major sections are and what the
purpose of each is? How often have you stared at the first
page of a site trying to figure out where to go for what you
want? Don't let that happen to your visitors; tell them up
front, either explicitly or by means of links with obvious
names. "Our Product Catalog" is fine; "Items" is not.

Site Organization

Good organization will make your job -- and theirs -- a lot
easier. A logical breakdown of material into major sections
and sub-sections makes it easy to think about navigation for
both you and your visitor. Design your link structure around
this plan. Each section and sub-section should have links to
pages above and below within that section, and also links to
the head pages of the other major sections.

Clarity

Do you have flocks of links clamoring for attention with no
obvious priority? If you have many pages, put the major
section links on the home page and on each lower page. Put
links to lower-level pages only on those pages logically
related to them. Don't overwhelm the visitor with a
confusingly-long list of detailed links on the home
page. They wont see the organization of the forest for the
trees.

Methods

Do you provide more than one method of navigation? Some
people like menus, some like site-maps. Remember too that
you have both first-time visitors who want to be guided
through things in meaningful order, and returning visitors
looking for a specific item. Different navigation methods
are appropriate for these different classes of
visitor. Often a site map in conjunction with a menu is a
good way of serving the needs of both on the home page
without creating overwhelming menus.

Link Location

It's fine to intersperse hyperlinks in your text. Don't,
however, make them read through the whole text of a page to
find a link! Make sure that all your links are also grouped
in one place separate from the text, and make sure it's the
same place on all your pages throughout. Don't make them
search around more than once to find out where you keep your
links. In a large site you may want to make section-head
links and local links distinct, for example with color or
position. If you do, use the same scheme everywhere on the
site.

Panic Button

The time will come when any visitor will realize they've
gotten deeply into some section that isn't what they wanted
and they want to bail out and start over. Every page should
have a "home" link with the rest of the links wherever they
are on the page, but it's often good practice to supplement
this with an obvious "Home" button in a consistent position
as part of the header of every page.

Within-Page Navigation

If you have long pages (and there are times when this is
acceptable) you will want to consider linking to topics or
sections within the page. This may be done from a table of
contents for the topics at the head of the page or within
the text to take the reader along different paths according
to their interests. If you do this be sure to also put a
link to the top of the page at convenient points.

The Obvious

Don't create blind alleys from which the only way out is by
the browser controls. Don't use javascript rollovers or
image-maps or other flashy navigation aids without providing
also for the browser that can't display them. Don't call
things by different names in different parts of the
site. Obvious right? Right, but you'd be amazed how often
it's done.

If you're really successful and build a great navigation
system, you'll be rewarded by your visitors never noticing
it!

Best,

Jamie

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Sidereal Designs, Inc. "Making The Web Simple."   http://siderealdesigns.com