Website Menu/Navigation?

Cole

How much should you breakdown your menu?

Ie: Services, Gallery, News, Process, Links, About etc...

I have been to a lot of websites that have 20-30 things listed in the menu, which sometimes seems overwhelming. My question is, do you keep it simple when it comes to the menu/navigation or go for more detail?

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dayspring

Keep it fairly simple. You can add links from other pages to related material.

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dougchips

What would you use a link page for? Do your product suppliers link to you in exchange for a link back to their sites?

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Cole

Honestly, I don't know why I have seen that so much but I have. It seems like every other website I go too have a links page with links to the suppliers they use the most (windows, doors etc...)

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rbsremodeling

I have 5 items on my menu.

I get about 70-80k hits a year. My website is very plain but it has worked well for me for 6 years. I believe if it is simple it is more effective. I have had many people tell me they stayed and looked around or proceeded to the estimate form because it was a easy site to navigate an not overwhelming

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dougchips

If you find out the logic behind a links page let me know. I feel that I worked hard enough to get them to my page that I don't want any external links......no way out of my site....no oh this button looks cute let's click on this and forget about the window site. If I had my way they could not leave my site without filling out an estimate form

I can understand if a supplier provided someone with a % of their leads in exchange for a link from a link page. The company that I buy windows from has provided me with one lead in the past year, they have asked for a link from my site without any luck.

While I'm on the subject, web design companies feel that they can link from any site that they build without asking. I tolerate it from my site since they provide me with a fair share of inbound links......but it is a unneeded way off of my site for a potential client (cute website, let's see who built it).

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To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

woodmagman

My thought is that, if everywhere you go the navigation is the same. ie. if you go to gallery then the navigation on the gallery page should indicate that you are on the gallery page and you can go back to where you came or pick another page from what appears to be the same menu.

Honestly, I don't know why I have seen that so much but I have. It seems like every other website I go too have a links page with links to the suppliers they use the most (windows, doors etc...)
seems like a dumb idea to me too. I believe it a relates back to the thought of having links to assit in ranking....

dougchips

After putting some more thought into this I have changed my views. I now think that it is a great idea if people link to my site from their home page and other pages if needed.

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To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

dayspring

Inbound links from related websites are very important as far as search engine ranking goes. However, I wouldn't suggest starting a link farm.
The type of navagation I was speaking of above was.

If you want say a portfolio of different jobs with pictures, slideshows, descriptions or whatever. On the nav bar link to your Portfolio Menu, on that page you can list the different projects with links to separate pages for each progect. Keeps load time and page file size down.
This is less cluttered than building a nav bar with all the links on your site on each page. Maybe it makes sense.

I don't see anything wrong with linking to manufactuer websites in order to educate a potential or current client on the product(s) that you are suggesting for their project. I always have external links open in a new window, never direct link offsite.

I guess it really depends on how you use your website.

Is it for advertisement only?

Do you use it during the job?

A website doesn't have to be a glorified newspaper ad.

Navagation should be simple. My opinion

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SquirrelNmoose

Keep it as simple as possible.
The most successful sites are very basic and allow the visitor to find the information they are seeking very quickly.
Look at Ebay, Amazon, Craigslist and so on. Very simple, very little graphics just content. And all of those started out even more basic than they are today.
Just think about when you visit a site from a search. If you don't don't find the info you are seeking almost immediately you move on to the next one.

Also I've read several misconceptions about linking to other sites here. Let me clarify a little for you.
Links to other sites can boost your Search engine ranking as well as get you banned from a search engine. Search engines strive to give their users the most relevant content to the search query as possible. They rate relevancy from several factors. The biggest one being readable content. So keywords in the content is essential. To verify the validity of the site content, search engines follow links to and from your site. If they have very similar content both sites will be considered more likely to have relevant content to the search query and given a slightly higher ranking.
To many non relevant links and the search engine will consider your sites content less relevant and lower your ranking.
You can still provide outside links just be aware of the affects. You can also use rel="nofollow" in the link code. That tells search engines (Google anyway) not to follow that link from your site.

There is more (much) for Search engine optimization but that should clear a little up anyway.

Long winded for my first post here, but I get a little excited about websites and technology.

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