Saturday, October 27, 2007
Custom Website Design -- The Links
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Dustin_Schwerman]Dustin Schwerman
The layout of the pages in your custom website is important. Likewise important is the layout of your entire site. That is to say, the structure. Although as web designers we know that a given link simply leads to entirely separate pages, the users expect a cohesive feel. Links divide the site into sections and sub-sections, and you want your links to provide an intuitive method of finding anything within your site.
When customizing, this becomes even more important. As the previous article on layout explained, you likely have an impressive graphic design scheme determining where everything fits. The nice thing about links is that they can be incorporated into graphics in their own rights. However, chances are good that your room for links will be limited, a fact that will only be augmented by the knowledge that too many choices makes for difficult navigation.
What it comes down to is that you don't want too many links dominating your pages. However, you do want visitors to quickly get to wherever they need to go in only a couple of clicks. This is yet another reason to divide your site into logical sections; it allows visitors to explore the options most relevant to them. All in all, that is probably the most important thing to consider when deciding how to structure your site; where are visitors going to want to go? What are they going to want to know?
Creating the right sections is key, and even more important is making sure that the sections clearly represent what the links say they will. A section of your site labelled services should provide information about your services. Other information, about your site or company itself, perhaps, should be placed in a different section. It's the same rules as classic essay writing; your links are your thesis statement. Just as how an essay will be graded down for not following the thesis regardless of how clever the content is, so too will visitors be less happy with a site whose links don't lead them to where they think they are going.
This can be important for custom websites specifically, because they should also have custom navigation. Remember, it's about your business; you don't just slap in a home, about us, FAQ, site map, and products page and call it a day. The sections you create, your method for structuring your site, should be ideally suited to guide visitors to the content you have to offer in the most valuable manner to them. Ask yourself what information will be useful to your audience, what are they going to want to know when they first open your site, and make sure your primary links are already directing them to where they can find those answers. Once they're in the right section, they should then have a selection of minor links that will take them to the individual pages they need to get to. And at any time, there should be text links to the main sections of your site and to a site map. Not only do these help ensure that the search engines can crawl your site, but they also make sure that a user can get from any page to any other page in only a couple of clicks.
The goal of a custom linking structure is to present the key points of your business, allowing your visitors to explore the content that will be most relevant to them. Links should never be dismissed as simply the method for moving about the site. Rather, they should be considered as thoroughly as any other part of the design process, and customized to optimal function for a given audience. Using such tactics will not only improve usability, but if considered early, will also help you to decide what sort of content is truly important for your business.
Copyright © 2007 Dustin Schwerman.
Dustin Schwerman is the primary web designer at [http://www.trulyuniqueweb.com]Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in impressive, custom sites designed to capture the essence of the businesses they represent, as well as creating useful web-based programs to improve and simplify some of the tasks of running a business. Their goal is to provide these services at affordable, pragmatic rates based on effort involved, rather than arbitrary costs based on number of pages or hours.
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