Every Wednesday & Thursday, there is a topic covered in internet marketing basics. This series is aimed to address the basic building blocks of internet business, the very foundations on which your business would prosper.The articles in this series are for people who have just started or willing to start. Let us sharpen the basic concepts together.

You are welcome and in fact encouraged to ask the questions and make comments. Your queries would be replied with full consideration.

Have you ever lost your way to an unknown place because there were not enough directions. You missed a turn because you had no way to find where to go.’

Website navigation has a similar function to do. It helps people reach various parts and pages of your website.

The better your navigation is, easier it is for people to access the content or the product in your website.

Bad navigation leads to a frustrated visitor which results in lost reader or sale as the case may be.

A navigation system must enable the user to find out

* Where they are now in your website
* What should they do to reach some other page

If your website is only a few pages, you can simply post the links to those pages and that would be enough. But if you host a lot of content, not only it should be organized but also easily reachable.

Objectives of a navigation system is to provide the user with indicators of location and control over the browsing.

A user can enter any page of your site from outside.  Wherever they might land in, they must be able to orient themselves quickly.

Use of Breadcrumbs

User orientation this can be easily done with use of breadcrumbs.

Breadcrumbs are series of hierarchical links that you have used to go from page to page within a section. For example if you are in article section of a website and category “wealth management”, the breadcrumbs might appear like

Home>Articles>Online Business.

Breadcrumbs is like a trail of the path you have followed. Each element in the breadcrumb is a link to that section or subsection.

Use of breadcrumbs allows the user to directly go back to the main section page or another sub section without following the same trail. breadcrumbs also show the context of the page being viewed and its relation to a section or sub-section.

They serve both as locator and navigational control.

If you  want people to move around your website, have a good navigation.

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