Ensure your links are easily distinguishable from the background and surrounding text by always making them underlined. Users expect underlined texts to be a link; and links to be underlined.
The way your inbound links are worded makes a big difference. They play an important factor for search engine results and for the users.
Having descriptive links with relevant words boosts your website SEO, improves accessibility, and gives a more friendly experience to all users.
Distinguishing visited links is very helpful to show where users have been before. Visited links should still stand out but not as obvious as unvisited ones. This is default on most browsers, but after adding custom styling to your website, you may need to include it.
The active menu item should stand out from the others. This way you make it easy for users to know where they are at in the website.
So you started your site with simple navigation but then you find yourself a few years later with site navigation that is saturated with links and everything looks messy.
Mega menu allows you to present your links in groups and make use of typography, icons and supporting images to explain user's choices.
Hamburger menus are everywhere. They are popular and they declutter mobile UIs but the downside is that the menu items are less discoverable and require an extra click.
Keeping a breadcrumb trail on every page is necessary. It is a navigation tool so users can easily locate themselves and find what they are looking for quickly. But don't link a page to itself!
Integrating a breadcrumb trail on webpages brings these benefits:
Breadcrumbs are an essential part of website navigation, providing users with a trail of links to indicate their location within a site's hierarchy. To maximize their effectiveness, it's important to keep breadcrumbs short and concise. By simplifying them, we reduce confusion and make them easier to understand, improving the overall user experience.
Breadcrumbs guide users through your website interactions. They are important as they give the user a sense of confidence in using your application. The user will tend to feel lost and unsure of what to do next if a application does not guide them properly. Good navigation through directional headings removes this feeling and gives the user confidence. This rule is especially important when it comes to design an e-commerce check out process, or a software set up wizard.
When redirecting users to another page, make sure that the text is consistent between the two pages.
- Do you underline links and show a clear hover effect?
- On-page - Do you use descriptive links?
- Do you distinguish visited links?
- Do you have an active state for the current menu item?
- Do you use Mega-menu navigation to improve usability?
- Do you use the hamburger menu icon wisely?
- Do you add breadcrumb to every webpage?
- Do you simplify breadcrumbs?
- Do your wizards include a 'Wizard Breadcrumb'?
- Do you display information consistently between linked pages?
- Do you make sure page names are consistently reffered to?
- Do you use icons on files' links to not to surprise users?
- Do you visually indicate when a link is external?
- Do you make external links open on a new tab?
- Do you avoid absolute internal links?
- Do you put all essential links in your website on your navigation bar?
- Do you make your pages easy to access?
- Do you avoid redundant linking (aka have a single link to a single location)?
- Do you avoid linking a page to itself?
- Do you know how to use anchor links?
- Do you choose effective anchor names?
- Do you turn your headings into anchor links?
- Do you add hyperlinks to phone numbers?
- Do you add 'call-able' links to your website?
- Do you save clicking through?
- Do you use an icon so a password prompt should never be a surprise?
- Do you have a section for related links?
- Do you avoid linking users to the sign in page directly?
- Do you indicate menu items that have a sub menu?
- Login Security - Do you know the appropriate error message for an invalid username or password entry?
- Do you avoid letting the screen go white?
- Do you give an option to widen a search?
- Calendar - Does your website make it easy for your users to add an event to their calendar?
- Do you know to not include UNC paths in URLs?
- Do you avoid including full stop or slash at the end of URLs?
- Do you remember to change the default title of a newly created page?