6 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Navigation
Jan. 02, 2010
37 Comments
This is a guest post by Eric Bannatyne. If you're interested in getting yourself in front of the readers of EpicLaunch, check out the guest posting guidelines here.
Anyone who knows the basics of web usability will know that excellent navigation is an important part of a usable website. Sure, it seems like a very simple thing, and it really is. But when you think about it, navigation is really more than a list of links across the top of a page. 9HPESNCDK8VV
Here are some things to consider when working on your blog’s navigation.
Use Numbered Page Navigation
The standard “Next Page”, “Previous Page” links sort of work, but they aren’t the best way to do it. If you have many pages at your blog, and a user has been browsing through them for a while, it can be easy for them to get lost.
WP-Page Navi
Using numbered navigation can help your users to quickly get an idea of where they are, therefore greatly improving usability. If you’re using WordPress, a good plugin to achieve this is WP-PageNavi. There is also a guide to integrate this in a theme from Cats Who Code.
Focus on Categories
Most blogs are focused on posts, not pages. Apart from possibly your “About” page, the first place users are going to look for information is in the categories. If you think you’ve got a decent category setup, it would be a good idea to draw the user’s attention to them, helping them to find what they need.
Of course, there are always some exceptions. For example, at FWebDe, very few people clicked on, or seemed to care about the category links. So, I decided to take them out in the new design.
It’s important to monitor your site, and possibly even do usability testing, to make sure you are making the right decisions.
Provide Helpful Search Results
When your users are searching for something, keep in mind that they are searching for something. Okay, that was fairly obvious. But you need to keep in mind that search results are important. A common mistake is to neglect your search results, resulting in users not being able to find what they want.
An even worse mistake is to not even have a search form at all. If you don’t have one, take a couple minutes to add one in, right now.
Don’t Rely on JavaScript/Flash for Navigation
One thing that really annoys me is when I come across a site using Flash for their navigation, sometimes only to achieve a cheezy hover effect.
Remember that not everybody has Flash. If you rely on Flash for navigation, your site will be completely useless to those without it. The same applies to relying on JavaScript, which can be disabled. Always have a fallback for those with JavaScript disabled.
Link to Other Posts Within Your Content
If your blog is about a certain topic (which it should be), you’ve probably mentioned something in one post that you’ve written another post about, before.
If a reader is interested in your post, they’ll probably be interested in a related topic mentioned in that post. After reading your post, they might even hop on over to Google to learn more about what you mentioned.
So why not add a link right there for them to follow? It is a great way for your users to find the information that they want, and it helps them to find out more about your site, possibly with them even subscribing to your posts.
Keep the Navigation in Standard Locations
This is a very simple one, but it is very important. The most important thing in usability is to keep everything where users expect it. Users will first look in the same places with the navigation in other websites, so you can keep it in those areas to help speed up your users’ interaction with your site.
The most common areas for the main navigation are across the top of the page, or in the sidebar. Pretty simple, right? It’s something easy to remember. Just make sure you don’t have a bunch of links swirling around the page for your users to chase after (kind of like those Flash tag clouds).
If you have any suggestions, or opinions please let me know below.
37 Responses to “6 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Navigation”
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Jan. 03, 2010
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Antti Kokkonen, ageberg X and Eric Bannatyne, hoda. hoda said: RT @Zemalf: 6 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Navigation : http://tinyurl.com/ybg4yxp via @entrepreneurpro [...]
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Hi Ben!
I enjoyed this post very much. Good ol’ fashioned common sense advice.
I was wondering… Ben, do you know of anything that can ease the pain of linking back to previous posts in your blog? Do I just have to search back through my archives and link to them manually? Ideally, what I’d like is…
highlight a word or phrase in the post editing window thingy dingy, hit some button/command that searches my archives and gives me a list of articles from which I choose one and the highlighted text becomes the link to the older article.
Steve Youngs´s last blog post: Life — The Greatest Balancing Act Of All Time
Hi Steve,
Just a reminder Eric Bannatyne from FWebDe.com is the author of this post. Hmmm what you are asking for sounds like a great idea, unfortunately I’ve never seen a plugin of that sort… Definitely a good idea though! Best regards
Hi Ben!
Hehe, yeah, I realised it was a guest post after I’d posted the comment. It’s amazing what you dont’t see when you look at a web page.
Steve Youngs´s last blog post: Life — The Greatest Balancing Act Of All Time
Hey,
It’s ok, I guess I just need to add more bio lines since this happened too many times… Thanks!
That sounds like an interesting idea. I’ve never heard of a plugin that does that, but I think I might try to write one (I think it would be useful, too), if I have some spare time.
If I ever get around to finishing it, I’ll be sure to let you know!
Eric B.´s last blog post: Automatically Update Your Copyright Date
Hi Eric!
Sorry for not immediately realising that you authored this article. Nice work, mate, really enjoyed it.
As for the plugin… good luck with it and you can call on me any time for testing or brainstorming.
Regards
Steve
Steve Youngs´s last blog post: Life — The Greatest Balancing Act Of All Time
great tips as always Ben! I mentioned to my designer that I didn’t want a flash drop down menu and he ignored me and did it anyway. You know the thing about stubborn creative folks….they will oftentimes forgo practical application for coolness effect. What do we do about that? lol
Shonika Proctor´s last blog post: How and Why Teen Entrepreneurs Publish Books
Whooops! Just noticed you didn’t write the post. It is still useful anyway
Shonika Proctor´s last blog post: How and Why Teen Entrepreneurs Publish Books
Haha it’s ok Eric did a great job. Just wondering do you have any ideas how to make it more apparent who wrote the post? Thanks Shonika!
Hey Ben! I still don’t realise where you have given credits to Eric. I think its only that you have given him some links to his Blog. Is that it?
His name is not mentioned anywhere in the post.
Anyway, Thanks Eric for this great piece of work.
Rohit´s last blog post: Pleasant Memories, Top Posts of 2009 and Goals for 2010
Hey
Notice in the sidebar where it says “author” there’s his icon, bio and link… People for some reason aren’t seeing that though so I’ll mention that its a guest post within the post from now on.
Got that right now! OK. Thats fine!
I agree, I hate flash as well, and it limits possibilities for users and traffic friendliness. I am a big fan of internal linking within posts and after, I often find myself staying on blogs longer because I find more good stuff to read.
Ann @ How To Make A Website´s last blog post: Make Your Websites Load Faster – Free Tool to Analyze and Fix Load Times
@Ben, my suggestion would be to include it in the first line (paragraph before the post).
Today’s post was written by guest blogger “person’s name of person’s blog”.
And then start the post in the next paragraph. At the end they can have their byline as well. I noticed you had a box on the side, but his picture wasn’t in there, so at first I thought it was an advertisement or something.
Shonika Proctor´s last blog post: How and Why Teen Entrepreneurs Publish Books
Ya that’s a good idea. From now on I’ll try to do that
Thanks again!
…and a gravatar-sized picture of the author. This I’m sure will not be missed by the reader’s eye.
Hey, in tweaking my blog’s theme a lot, I have forgotten that I’ve removed the search box altogether. Guess, I’ll get back under the chassis again and bring it back.
James Moralde´s last blog post: Lasik: Royal Road to Better Vision
Great tips, Ben. I think I really need the wordpress plugin for the pages navigation. Thanks for talking about the pages navigation and mentioning the plug-in.
I also think that a related posts widget below all posts will help a blog’s readers find the blog’s other posts and this helps a lot with time on site, navigation, and a whole lot of other stuff
.
Happy New Year!
Shirley´s last blog post: Top Tweeters Of 2009
Hey great advice, but Eric Bannatyne from FWebDe.com wrote this post, so he’s the one to be thanks
I see that I really need to add more bio lines for guest posts… Happy New Year!
Oops, sorry, that was a typo because I knew Eric wrote this post
.
Great tips, Eric, and great blog, Ben
.
Shirley´s last blog post: Top Tweeters Of 2009
Yes, that’s also a great way to help users to find related content
I love the part about standard locations, many bloggers need to stop being too creative.
Ironically, this is the exact problem with the guest name; no way would I have ever looked to the sidebar for that info.
Dennis Edell´s last blog post: PLEASE COMMENT – Have You EVER Used The Added Feature Of My Subscribe To Comments Plugin??
Agree. I guess I just thought that the sidebar was a better way to display the guest post author, but I was wrong. I’m going to keep it but make it more clear from now on, within the posts that its written by a guest.
Thank you for providing some nice information Ben, Proper navigation is now important for get rank on search engine. Google will now see all things before ranking a page on sERP
chandan´s last blog post: Search work at home opportunities at digital point forum
You should thank Eric for this guest post. I’m for sure going to have mark guest posts more, now that this has happened so many times
Well pointed out dude. Numbered navigation is always better than “Older posts” method
Ramkumar´s last blog post: Kaspersky blocks Infolinks – Trojan Activity
I noticed linking to other posts in my blog always increases traffic , how bout linking to other categories? whats your take on that , do you think it helps
Well, if the category you’re linking to is related to what you are talking about, it can be really helpful as well.
Eric B.´s last blog post: How to Create a Web Design Portfolio Page in WordPress: Part 1
Great tips Eric. Linking to your content is an absolute must.
Regards,
Karl
Karl Foxley´s last blog post: What Are The Best Links For SEO And How To Get Them?
Wonderful tips Eric, I am with the idea of linking to your content as Karl!
Hesham´s last blog post: Join The First Making Money Online Social Network and Bookmarks website
Ruben, yea it should help if you link to other categories.
Yes, linking to categories is a great idea, because it will show your readers all of your posts based on similar topics, giving them more relevant information.
Eric B.´s last blog post: 11 Awesome WordPress Plugins That I Use
I am reading this article second time today, you have to be more careful with content leakers. If I will fount it again I will send you a link
This may not be exactly the solution. But I found this WP plugin which helps readers with navigation – YARPP Yet another related posts plugin
Ganapathy´s last blog post: Practical tips to PM – 12
If the plugin works and you think it would be good for your blog then use it! Displaying a list of related posts in your post footer can really help with navigation, by giving your users somewhere to go next.
Ben – is this theme a woo theme that you have customized? I am starting to look for something other than the current StudioPress theme I am running.
Grant Hammond´s last blog post: Q1 2010 Nashville Condo Closings
Yes it is, it’s called Headlines, it’s a great theme!