Decide what types of content you want to offer your visitors
There are any number of types of content, and your site may offer just
one, or many, types of content to your visitors. The types of content
will, to a large extent, define how your navigation will be structured,
so it's important to differentiate between them. It is usually a good
idea to design a separate navigation system for each type of content.
Here are a few examples:
Instructive Articles:
These are custom written, informative articles that explain to the
reader how things work, or generally educate the reader. These are not
usually topical; in other words, they don't depend on current events to
be relevant. This article, for example, is instructive. Navigation
systems designed for instructive articles will have to be able to grow,
because the older articles don't become irrelevant, and the newer
articles will often build upon the information in the older.
News Articles:
These are also custom written, informative articles, but these
describe new incidents or changes to the current state of events. These
are topical, and will often become outdated fairly quickly. A site that
includes news articles will have to be updated often, and the navigation
system will have to include archives for old news articles. Navigation
systems will typically offer the latest news articles directly, rather
than categorising them first, and offer a categorised archive section
for older articles.
Product Pages:
These pages offer a product to the visitor. They will use a
completely different style of writing from informative articles, because
now you are trying to sell something. If you have a large number of
products, you will also have to categorise them, with pages for each
category as well. Navigation systems will typically offer the top level
categories, with a drill down menu system to get to the relevant
products. You may also choose to supply "product finder" tools for your
visitors to easily find the product they need, but these need to be
custom built for your type of product, and require advanced programming
knowledge.
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