Good, effective navigation is essential to the success of any website. When it comes to Internet advertising for plastic surgeons, visitors to your website must be able to find what they’re looking for, whether it be information about plastic surgery procedures, your qualifications and credentials as a plastic surgeon, or a phone number or email address to contact you. In order for them to find that information, your site’s navigation must be effective and easy to use. Part of what makes for effective navigation is navigation that is highly visible.
Highly visible navigations stands out and is clear and obvious. The following are simple tips for creating highly visible navigation:
- Positioning. Position your navigation in a prime spot on your website. It should have a clearly designated section of the page and should be consistently placed on every page of your site. The best location is on either the left or top of the page. Visitors need to be able to immediately recognize that area as the navigation area, and Internet users tend to expect navigation to be in one of these two positions. Your navigation does not need to be the main focus of your page, just highly visible.
- Emphasis. You can add emphasis to your navigation to make it stand out from the rest of the page. The best way to do this, aside from using differences in size, is with color. Very bright, vivid colors will help elements on a page stand out. However, you don’t need to use the brightest or strongest colors for your navigation. You simply need to use a color that contrasts with the rest of the page. Be sure, however, that the color you choose still complements the other colors on your page. Navigation is often placed on a colored field, horizontal bar or sidebar.
- Space. Give your navigation plenty of space, keeping it free of surrounding clutter. This will help it to get noticed. Other elements on the page, including text, should be placed well away from your navigation to keep them from crowding it. It’s also very important that you keep your navigation well away from any ads on your site. Internet users tend to ignore ads and much of what’s surrounding them. Navigation placed about the logo or on the right side of the page is often confused with ads.