4 Navigation Designs Patterns That Rule The Web

By Author: Rajneesh Kumar
Total Articles: 71
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When a user visits a website, the one thing that helps him go through it is navigation. A website could contain a number of navigation design patterns to help user jump from one section, category or page to another. While number of design patterns are used by web design companies to make the website navigable, there are only few that rule the web and find their place in most of the web designs. So, here are the four navigation design patterns that rule the web pages.

Top Horizontal Bar Navigation

It is one of the most popular site navigation menu design patterns at present and mostly finds its place below or above site header of all the web pages. Designers mostly employ it as primary site navigation menu with drop-down menus often enhancing its usability. Site logo is often found around this bar only. It is a great navigation tool but only certain amount of links can be used if one doesn’t wish to use sub-navigation. Websites with very complex set of information, large number of products or services often hesitate ...
... to adopt this structure.

Vertical Bar Navigation

Ever noticed the vertical bar on the left with a lot of columns often with the option of sub navigation? Well, that is called vertical navigation bar. Navigation items are stacked one on top of the other and sometimes contain categorized items. It is also sometimes placed on the right side but left is the most probable place you must have seen it. For websites that have a large number of main navigation links, vertical bar navigation comes handy. But be wary of using too many links, for it will only confuse users.

Tabs Navigation

Tabs navigation is something users can psychologically relate to because they are used in notebooks too. Tabs can be experimented with and their look can be altered as per the whim of the designer. One can choose from realistic, textured, glossy, rounded, simple and squared-edge tabs as per the overall look of the website. Tabs are mostly used horizontally but some designers even go for vertical usage. The only drawback that keeps them from getting as popular as top horizontal bars is that they ask for more work in the field of markup, image assets and CSS.

Breadcrumb Navigation

It is a secondary navigation pattern rather than a primary one. It supports the primary one and makes users aware about their location in the website. Breadcrumbs make it simple for the users to retrace their path if they wish to go back to the previously opened pages. It contains horizontal list of text links pointing to the left direction to denote the progress and hierarchy. There are no noticeable examples in which breadcrumbs navigation has served the purpose of primary navigation. It is usually employed in websites that are smartly categorized in sections.

There are a number of other navigation patterns too but let’s leave them for another day. And don’t forget to ask your ‘best web design company’ some questions about the same to see their level of knowhow.