Consistency in Website Navigation

A website’s navigation is crucial to the visiting user’s ability to move around the site. Much like we discussed in the previous post about website usability, you want the user to be able to navigate your site without requiring a lot of thinking. Keeping a consistent website navigation scheme is one very important facet.

Text links in your website’s content should look different from normal, non-hyperlinked text. It’s usually a good idea to keep the color scheme that most Web users are familiar with — blue text indicates a hyperlink, while purple text indicates a hyperlink that has been visited previously.

If possible, it’s also a good idea to keep your menu system the same over all of the pages on your website. Changing the menu structure for some pages, but not all of them, can confuse the user if they’ve trained themselves to look for links to click in certain locations.

When using images for your navigation menu, it’s important to include alternative text for each image in case your visitor is using a device or browser that does not allow for images to be loaded. The alternative text will show up in place of the image and let the user know what link the missing image represents.

By keeping a consistency across your website’s navigation in these very important areas, you’ll provide a better user experience for end users who visit your website, and, as a result, you’ll likely see increased conversions or a lower bounce rate.