Navigation Pro's Con's and Ideas

[uklejon]

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Thinking about re-designing my top navigation bar. The version now on has been there for 6 months or so and i've now got lots of new pages that i want linked to from all other pages....

What type of Nav systems have you found to work best...

Thinking about....

HTML - Just basic cells with text link in them and maybe a mouseover for the cell background using CSS.

Problem with this is i have too many pages i want to link to and it will look a mess at the top of the page.

IMAGES - What i'm using at the moment and want to get away from as again space is limited and i have too many pages i want direct links to.

DHTML/JS - This sounds great as all important pages can be linked to using a drop down DHTML menu BUT search engines will have problems picking up on the links.......

Any other ideas for Nav menu's???

Thanks

carol

[matbennett]

Sure that my designer will disagree, but I don't like image based navigation. I would much rather spell out to search engines what they will find if they follow the link.

My favourite at the moment is simple CSS, with a bit of PHP/ASP/Whatever behind it to make it a bit smarter. Take a look at the left hand menu of www.findwatches.co.uk to see what I mean. This allows for unlimited nesting without the need for DHTML or Javascript. Smartening up the CSS could easily give something that looked as good as images.

[uklejon]

Thanks Matt,

I like that, its nice and simple. I'll take some ideas from that....if you dont mind

Looking at creating the menu dynamically this morning using either a db or xml sheet for the links.......

thanks

Carol

[Elaine]

Hi Carol - I was just going to post a new topic with my latest findings, but you might find it interesting.

I redesigned a while ago, got rid of the drop down dhtml menus and placed plain old html links right across the top of the page - took some sorting out and got some good advice from folks on here - not everybody liked it though.

The main reasons were to try and increase my page impressions and length of stay and become more search engine friendly. Visitors certainly stay longer on the site and the page impressions have also gone up and it seems to be working with the search engines as well.

But this week I have stumbled on the main benefit - I moved my google ads to the left-hand side of the page - where most folk look for the index - and my click through rate and earnings have more than doubled - trebled on Tuesday, it's quite amazing.

It doesn't seem to have effected my 'affiliate' earnings either - but if it does I'll simply remove them from that particular page.

I

[matbennett]

I like that, its nice and simple. I'll take some ideas from that....if you dont mind

Go for it. I probably got the idea somewhere else anyway!

[uklejon]

Elaine,

Just had a look at your navigation and i like it.....granted its not the slickest thing going but if impressions are up then what does it matter, thats what i'm after. I think people are having trouble finding some of my pages, particlualy the information pages which are really important.

I'm looking at doing something like that on my site only using a bit of CSS for mouseover backgrounds.......

May finish it today

[Aquanuke]

Elaine, the text in the nav is too small and you cant change text size in the browser (due to the css). Whit on purple with small text very hard on the eyes.

Btw site dosent work too good in mozilla or opera.