How to handle Website Navigation in Large Websites ?

 Everyone knows what Website Navigation actually means.  These are basically links that lead and connect towards other pages within website. Its main aim is to help users or visitors in finding their stuff that they want easily, smoothly, and effectively without any difficulty. Without website navigation, one cannot determine where to find their stuff, emails, blog, contact information, etc. If you want to keep people on your website for long, loyal towards your brand and increase user experience, then give them more reasons to click on various links. But website navigation is not an easy task in large websites. Structure and label of website navigation has a greater impact on the sale of products and the growth of the business.  

Challenges of Website Navigation in Large Websites  

Navigation is not same among different websites i.e., large websites, small websites, medium scale websites, etc.  It is difficult to handle, manage, and organize mega or large websites usually that are owned by large businesses or companies. One has to face many challenges while creating website navigation within website for such companies as given below:  

• It is difficult to find all possible links among various product and marketing pages.
• More Deeper website is, more difficult it is for users to find context for where they are.
• Sometimes, traditional navigation does not support various entry points and can confuse people entering form microsite or subsection.
• Even some section of large websites does not have any link support that they need from other web pages to get people on section.

Solutions to Solve Challenges  

We might have heard somewhere that to every problem, there is always a solution. It’s just that you should have that much capability to find that solution. In this case, there are basically three solutions that one can choose to get rid of such navigation problems in large websites. These three solutions are given below:  

1. Delegate to Different Departments:  

Delegate simply means to assign some responsibilities to another person to perform or carry out specific task. Managers have some activities that they supposed to do but they have other task also to do i.e., to make sure that other people are doing tasks that have been assigned to them to accomplish goal. Firstly, divide websites in smaller sections or micro sites. Then, assign these smaller websites or microsites to employees belonging to different departments. This will not only reduce work load but also increase chances of making website more effective with good navigation. Each microsite will have its own navigation with consistent design language, typography, layout, etc., that in turn will resolve issues associated with navigation of large websites.  

2. Use Tools or Build Tools:  

Websites that are designed using tools is a more effective and good one. It automates many manual processes. Each and every business should their own tool to automate the process of crawling page. Tools that are owned and controlled by an organization itself are known as proprietary tools. These tools are really important while for websites. Proprietary websites are websites that are developed using proprietary tool owned and controlled by developer. They help to identify and fix all issues related to handling large websites. Examples include Screaming Frog, Botify, DeepCrawl, etc. Help in determining issue and then resolving it. These are best tools that automate many manual processes and help us in determining that which pages links to other pages.  

3. Use a Phased Approach:  

Phase approach simply means to divide the existing system into a new one that takes place in stages. It makes it easy and simple to resolve issues by handling and working on one section or micro web at a time with an optimized plan. It might take more time to complete the task but it is worth it as it helps one to determine what to optimize first.