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The Page Menu
The page menu is the main navigation bar
for every page on your website. Even though you may have 100 or
more pages on your website, you will not want to have all the
pages listed on every page. Having a main menu with 100 buttons
is just one very bad idea.
The menu can appear on any of the 4 sides
of the page, right, left, top or bottom. The menu can be text
links or images usually refered to as buttons.
By default, each page you add to your
website will be included in the main menu as a text link. You can
exclude pages from the main menu or convert the text links into
buttom images.
The main menu, should be just that. A
simplified navagation tool with 10 to 15 main topics. If you sell
products, add a menu button for the shopping cart. Don't add a
button for every product. The idea is to get people to the area
of the website with your products where they can browse or buy.
You also want to give the user the ability to get back to other
areas of your website, such as the contact page or guestbook.
The system automatically adds pages to the
main menu when you add the page. Use the "Exclude Pages"
feature under the "Edit Pages" section of the
management console, to remove the pages from the menu.
You can also define the order of the images
that make up your menu. For information on defining button oder click here.
It is also important to note that search
engines do not always read image links. So having text links to
internal pages is critical to search engine inclusion. You can of
course leave the main menu as text rather than making button
images. But the look is cheap and unprofesional. The prefered
method is to include links in your text.
The fact that you will have links within
the pages is a good reason not to duplicate everything on the
main menu.
You should also not allow the main menu to
become the focal point of the website. Keep the buttons suttle
and blended with the main design. You want the visitors viewing
your pages, not being distracted by the navigation menu.
The online site builder allows you to build your own
button images or use any of the thousands of button blanks in the
gallery. But just because there are thousands of images to choose
from does not mean you need to use them all. Sometimes it is hard
to settle on the lest flashy button. But a clean and friendly
design will pay off in the end.
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