Concept Company

by Tina Hutzelman

If you missed the first post in this series, please see Part 1 which addresses Search Engine Optimization and load time.

Pitfall #3 – It’s Easy to Get Lost in Your Site

Website navigation is as important an infrastructure as a city’s street system. Both can either make or break a visit.

Usability studies on websites have resulted in the “Rule of Three Clicks.” According to this rule, major sections of a site should not be more than three clicks from any page.

Other things that make navigation more intuitive are:

• Clearly separating navigation elements from other text and graphics
• Keeping navigation links short and descriptive
• Including the most important links on every page
• Including a site map if you have a large or complicated website

You’re probably quite familiar with the structure of your website. So you’re not going to be the best candidate to critique its navigation. Find some people who don’t know your website. Tell them what typical customers look for during a visit. Ask your panel of judges how easy it was for them to get around the site and find information.

Obviously the best time to consider site navigation is when the site is built. However, if you find your navigation is more hindrance than help, you may want to invest in a redesign.

Pitfall #4 – Your Site is Too Flashy

Flash – it’s dynamic, it’s sexy, it’s overused. With Flash, the word
is “moderation.”

Even though many think of Flash as eye-candy, just as many find it annoying. This especially holds true if the same thing plays every time the home page loads and there’s no way to “Skip Intro.”

Personal preferences aside, there are technical reasons to use Flash judiciously. Although most browsers now support Flash, some don’t. How many people do you think are willing to install a program just to see what you have on your site? If you’re lucky enough to find them, you had better make it worth their time. And speaking of time, Flash elements take longer to load and can’t be indexed by search engines.

In spite of the cautions about Flash, use it – but use it wisely. Flash provides an excellent way to demonstrate complicated processes. Movement, color and sound attract attention. And we live in a world that almost expects multi-sensory experiences.

In our next post, we’ll address Narcissistic and difficult to read sites.

Tags: using Flash in websites, website navigation

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under Website Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.