In the middle period of website designing, navigation of websites was positioned to the left hand side of the web page in a vertical manner. But a vertical navigation is not that effective. Some web designers go for right side navigation while some go for left side navigation. But the left side vertical navigation was more common. However, research, study and experience have found that the horizontal navigation is more effective than vertical navigation. Here are 3 main reasons why vertical navigation should be avoided.
- Reducing the importance of information – When your website has a vertical navigation either on left or right side, the elements on the remaining website do no earn much attention. Visitor’s attention gets diverted to just the navigation as it can over the entire web page also thereby reducing the importance of the other web elements and graphics.
- Diluting the importance of website content – Website content is the most important element in a website. A vertical navigation might now allow proper visibility of website content. For the website content to be effective there should be proper structure for the website.
- Occupies more space – An effective website is the one in which one tries to put as much as quality information in a web page. A vertical navigation occupies a lot of space. Moreover this space of the website is meant for highlighting the main purpose of the website. Thus, vertical navigation can be avoided for a website.
