Structure and Navigation

Structure

Before jumping into setting up your own website, consider the structure. Webpages are often compared to books or magazines that are simply read online. Websites are however, more like Newspapers: a reader may read a headline and then jump to page B6; some readers may not see the front page at all, jumping instead to the Lifestyles section, and in turn, hoping to get back to the headlines afterward.

Let me clear up a distinction that I have not made throughout the text of this site; a webpage and website are not the same thing. They are to some extent interchangeable; in most of the other articles I have not worked at distinguishing between the two. However, the difference is very relevant for the remainder of this section. A webpage is a single page—relatively useless unless it connects to another page. A website on the other hand, is several sites linked together based around a similar topic, hosted at the same location.

So now if you are creating a website rather than a webpage, you absolutely must think about structuring the pages in a logical way so that readers are not lost, confused and ultimately frustrated. There are several basic designs for a site that can easily be replicated.

The most basic site layout is a Main Index Page linking to the content pages. For the most part, this site is laid out in this fashion. By far, this is the simplest, most common structure. Visitors come to the main page, select what topic they wish to read, and visit that page. In turn, the subpages link back directly and only to the main index page. There are few structures that are easier to maintain. The disadvantage is that the visitor of the site might be frustrated returning the main page each time. Also, while the site is open to adding many pages, often, the site is more suited to stand alone articles.

Another less common, but probably more simplistic design is a linear based page. In this case, the site is laid out with the first page linking to the second, and the second to the third, and third to the fourth and so on. The disadvantage to this structure is visitors jumping in at page three miss the first two pages. However, some sites may benefit from structuring at least part of their content in this way. For example, an article about traveling to Paris may have one page for each day traveled, in the order the author traveled in; the reader is taken on a linear virtual journey.

Another common structure for a webpage is a spider web design. This style relies on a navigational bar that links each page to every other page. This design is the most difficult style to construct, since each time a page is added, the page link must be updated on every other page in the site. A site that will remain without constant updates, or one that is maintained with software like Dreamweaver (Dreamweaver creates a template that updates all the pages automatically when the template is modified), is most likely to have the spider web structure.

Finally, the composite structure is another common style. In this case, the Main Index Page and Sub-Topic Index pages are linked in a spider web. Each Sub-Topic page then acts as a Main Index page linking to the contents of each of sub-topic. For instance, a site on Reptiles might have sub-topics of snakes, lizards, and dinosaurs linked in a spider web design. Then the Snakes page would act as a Main Index Page linking to all the articles on Snakes. Each time an article about snakes was added, only the Main Snake Index Page would need to updated; the links to the other subtopics would not change, nor would all the pages need to link to the new Snake article.

Navigation

Navigation is important to think about early on. Know how big you ultimately plan on making your site; how often is the content going to be updated; are you making your site too complex to navigate?

Navigation is often the difference between a successful site and a not successful one. Amazon.com started out as a simple web retailer. Subsequently, they started selling dozens of different types of products from books to lawn and garden equipment. They added services like wedding registries and favorites lists. They’re book recommendation system is top notch and routinely does a good job of getting me to buy more books. Yet, navigating through the site is nearly impossible (other than to search for merchandise). For instance, I have in the past bought numerous academic books from Amazon; I don’t want these used to calculate book recommendations since my real interest is new fiction. Editing the list of books used to calculate my recommendations requires clicking through five different pages because the navigation throughout the Amazon site was not conceived of when all the site did was sell books and music.

Figuring out the structure of your site early on will help you figure out how best to allow visitors to navigate your entire site. Having single webpages that connect to no other page does not constitute a site; in all likelihood, no one will ever even visit such a site.