How To Make Your Website Easy To Access And Navigate - Part2

In Part 1, I talked about how a good page layout and using image alternate text can make your website easier to navigate.

In this part I will talk about the proper way to do links. There are generally two types of links that can be put on a web page - an external link and an anchor link. An external link is any link that takes the viewer off the current page. It can take him to another page on the same website, or take her completely off to another site. An anchor link is simply a link that takes the viewer to another part of the same page, and is sometimes called a skip link. Anchor links are very useful for quick navigation of a web page. When a viewer wants to skip a large block of text that he is not interested in at that moment, then he should be able to click on an anchor link that takes him to the next section. Similarly, when he is at the bottom of the page and wants to go back to the top to access the menus, an anchor link that says something like “back to top” should be placed at the bottom of any long page, so one does not have to scroll all the way up to access the menus. With a very long page, such links should be placed every few paragraphs apart to enable easier navigation. If you don’t know how to include an anchor link, consult a site such as w3 and look at the examples. They are basically the same as regular links, but work together with the ANAME attribute.

Avoid using the popular “click here” as a way to link. Instead, use a part of a sentence. For example, do NOT use something like, “To find more about cleaning your rug, click here”. Instead, use something like, “Learn more about cleaning your rug” then highlight the entire sentence or the last part of it and use it as a link. This way the reader does not have to look back at the beginning of the sentence to find out what the link is all about when it says “click here”. He can see immediately what it is about when it says in the link itself “cleaning your rug”. Such a simple thing makes a big difference in how pleasant or unpleasant it is for visitors to read your page.

Do not remove the underline on a link. Many web designers don’t like the look of the underlined link and they remove it. It may make the page look visually better, but sometimes it defeats the purpose because it so happens that many people are color blind, and can see the underlined link much better than the colored one. Also, you may sometimes design a page with a background color that does not contrast well with the color of the linked text, thus making it difficult if not impossible to see. Therefore leave the underline intact so your viewers can see it and use it as it is intended.

We will continue in Part 3 with some other simple tips to improve your hosted website and make it easy to access and navigate.

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