Website Plan

Website Plan

Introduction

In web design, there are certain common design patterns that are used for interaction. Site navigation has a wide variety of common and familiar design patterns that can be used as a foundation for building effective information architecture for a website. This guide covers popular site navigation design patterns. For each site navigation design pattern, we will discuss its common characteristics, its drawbacks, and when best to use it. Top horizontal bar navigation is one of the two most popular kinds of site navigation menu design patterns out there. It's used most frequently as the primary site navigation menu, and is most commonly located either directly above or directly below the site header of all web pages in a site (Abelson, 2008).

Website Plan: Site Navigation

Top horizontal bar navigation is perfect for sites that only need to display 5-12 navigation items in the main navigation. It is also the only option for primary navigation for single-column website layouts (aside from footer navigation, which is generally used as a secondary navigation system). When combined with dropdown sub-navigation, the top horizontal bar navigation design pattern can hold more links. The vertical bar/sidebar navigation design pattern is seen all over the place, on virtually every kind of website. Part of that is because vertical navigation is one of the most versatile patterns out there, able to accommodate a long list of links. (Abelson, 2008)

It can be used alongside sub-navigation menus, or on its own. It's easily used for primary site navigation that contains a lot of links. Vertical bar/sidebar navigation can be integrated into almost any kind of multi-column design layout. Vertical menus, because of their ability to handle many links, can sometimes get overwhelming to users when they are too lengthy. Try to limit the number of links you include, and instead, use fly-out sub-navigation menus for sites with more content. (Abelson, 2008) Also, consider dividing the links into intuitive categories to help users find links of interest quicker. Vertical navigation is suitable for almost any kind of site, but especially sites that have more than a handful of main navigation links. Tabs navigation can be styled virtually any way you want, from realistic, textured tabs that look straight out of a notebook to glossy, rounded tabs and simple, squared-edge tabs. They're seen on virtually every kind of site, and can be incorporated into almost any visual style. (Angwin, 2010) (Angwin, 2010).

Tabs ...